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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Three Ghost Stories, by Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Three Ghost Stories
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 9, 2013  [eBook #1289]
+[This file was first posted on April 5, 1998]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE GHOST STORIES***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall edition of “Christmas Stories”
+by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                           THREE GHOST STORIES
+
+
+                            by Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+The Haunted House             121
+The Trial For Murder          303
+The Signal-Man                312
+
+
+
+
+THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
+IN TWO CHAPTERS. {121}
+
+
+                                 [1859.]
+
+
+
+THE MORTALS IN THE HOUSE.
+
+
+UNDER none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none
+of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance
+with the house which is the subject of this Christmas piece.  I saw it in
+the daylight, with the sun upon it.  There was no wind, no rain, no
+lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance, of any kind, to
+heighten its effect.  More than that: I had come to it direct from a
+railway station: it was not more than a mile distant from the railway
+station; and, as I stood outside the house, looking back upon the way I
+had come, I could see the goods train running smoothly along the
+embankment in the valley.  I will not say that everything was utterly
+commonplace, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly
+commonplace people—and there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on
+myself to say that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine
+autumn morning.
+
+The manner of my lighting on it was this.
+
+I was travelling towards London out of the North, intending to stop by
+the way, to look at the house.  My health required a temporary residence
+in the country; and a friend of mine who knew that, and who had happened
+to drive past the house, had written to me to suggest it as a likely
+place.  I had got into the train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and
+had woke up and had sat looking out of window at the brilliant Northern
+Lights in the sky, and had fallen asleep again, and had woke up again to
+find the night gone, with the usual discontented conviction on me that I
+hadn’t been to sleep at all;—upon which question, in the first imbecility
+of that condition, I am ashamed to believe that I would have done wager
+by battle with the man who sat opposite me.  That opposite man had had,
+through the night—as that opposite man always has—several legs too many,
+and all of them too long.  In addition to this unreasonable conduct
+(which was only to be expected of him), he had had a pencil and a
+pocket-book, and had been perpetually listening and taking notes.  It had
+appeared to me that these aggravating notes related to the jolts and
+bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned myself to his taking
+them, under a general supposition that he was in the civil-engineering
+way of life, if he had not sat staring straight over my head whenever he
+listened.  He was a goggle-eyed gentleman of a perplexed aspect, and his
+demeanour became unbearable.
+
+It was a cold, dead morning (the sun not being up yet), and when I had
+out-watched the paling light of the fires of the iron country, and the
+curtain of heavy smoke that hung at once between me and the stars and
+between me and the day, I turned to my fellow-traveller and said:
+
+“I _beg_ your pardon, sir, but do you observe anything particular in me?”
+For, really, he appeared to be taking down, either my travelling-cap or
+my hair, with a minuteness that was a liberty.
+
+The goggle-eyed gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as if the
+back of the carriage were a hundred miles off, and said, with a lofty
+look of compassion for my insignificance:
+
+“In you, sir?—B.”
+
+“B, sir?” said I, growing warm.
+
+“I have nothing to do with you, sir,” returned the gentleman; “pray let
+me listen—O.”
+
+He enunciated this vowel after a pause, and noted it down.
+
+At first I was alarmed, for an Express lunatic and no communication with
+the guard, is a serious position.  The thought came to my relief that the
+gentleman might be what is popularly called a Rapper: one of a sect for
+(some of) whom I have the highest respect, but whom I don’t believe in.
+I was going to ask him the question, when he took the bread out of my
+mouth.
+
+“You will excuse me,” said the gentleman contemptuously, “if I am too
+much in advance of common humanity to trouble myself at all about it.  I
+have passed the night—as indeed I pass the whole of my time now—in
+spiritual intercourse.”
+
+“O!” said I, somewhat snappishly.
+
+“The conferences of the night began,” continued the gentleman, turning
+several leaves of his note-book, “with this message: ‘Evil communications
+corrupt good manners.’”
+
+“Sound,” said I; “but, absolutely new?”
+
+“New from spirits,” returned the gentleman.
+
+I could only repeat my rather snappish “O!” and ask if I might be
+favoured with the last communication.
+
+“‘A bird in the hand,’” said the gentleman, reading his last entry with
+great solemnity, “‘is worth two in the Bosh.’”
+
+“Truly I am of the same opinion,” said I; “but shouldn’t it be Bush?”
+
+“It came to me, Bosh,” returned the gentleman.
+
+The gentleman then informed me that the spirit of Socrates had delivered
+this special revelation in the course of the night.  “My friend, I hope
+you are pretty well.  There are two in this railway carriage.  How do you
+do?  There are seventeen thousand four hundred and seventy-nine spirits
+here, but you cannot see them.  Pythagoras is here.  He is not at liberty
+to mention it, but hopes you like travelling.”  Galileo likewise had
+dropped in, with this scientific intelligence.  “I am glad to see you,
+_amico_.  _Come sta_?  Water will freeze when it is cold enough.
+_Addio_!”  In the course of the night, also, the following phenomena had
+occurred.  Bishop Butler had insisted on spelling his name, “Bubler,” for
+which offence against orthography and good manners he had been dismissed
+as out of temper.  John Milton (suspected of wilful mystification) had
+repudiated the authorship of Paradise Lost, and had introduced, as joint
+authors of that poem, two Unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers
+and Scadgingtone.  And Prince Arthur, nephew of King John of England, had
+described himself as tolerably comfortable in the seventh circle, where
+he was learning to paint on velvet, under the direction of Mrs. Trimmer
+and Mary Queen of Scots.
+
+If this should meet the eye of the gentleman who favoured me with these
+disclosures, I trust he will excuse my confessing that the sight of the
+rising sun, and the contemplation of the magnificent Order of the vast
+Universe, made me impatient of them.  In a word, I was so impatient of
+them, that I was mightily glad to get out at the next station, and to
+exchange these clouds and vapours for the free air of Heaven.
+
+By that time it was a beautiful morning.  As I walked away among such
+leaves as had already fallen from the golden, brown, and russet trees;
+and as I looked around me on the wonders of Creation, and thought of the
+steady, unchanging, and harmonious laws by which they are sustained; the
+gentleman’s spiritual intercourse seemed to me as poor a piece of
+journey-work as ever this world saw.  In which heathen state of mind, I
+came within view of the house, and stopped to examine it attentively.
+
+It was a solitary house, standing in a sadly neglected garden: a pretty
+even square of some two acres.  It was a house of about the time of
+George the Second; as stiff, as cold, as formal, and in as bad taste, as
+could possibly be desired by the most loyal admirer of the whole quartet
+of Georges.  It was uninhabited, but had, within a year or two, been
+cheaply repaired to render it habitable; I say cheaply, because the work
+had been done in a surface manner, and was already decaying as to the
+paint and plaster, though the colours were fresh.  A lop-sided board
+drooped over the garden wall, announcing that it was “to let on very
+reasonable terms, well furnished.”  It was much too closely and heavily
+shadowed by trees, and, in particular, there were six tall poplars before
+the front windows, which were excessively melancholy, and the site of
+which had been extremely ill chosen.
+
+It was easy to see that it was an avoided house—a house that was shunned
+by the village, to which my eye was guided by a church spire some half a
+mile off—a house that nobody would take.  And the natural inference was,
+that it had the reputation of being a haunted house.
+
+                       [Picture: The haunted house]
+
+No period within the four-and-twenty hours of day and night is so solemn
+to me, as the early morning.  In the summer-time, I often rise very
+early, and repair to my room to do a day’s work before breakfast, and I
+am always on those occasions deeply impressed by the stillness and
+solitude around me.  Besides that there is something awful in the being
+surrounded by familiar faces asleep—in the knowledge that those who are
+dearest to us and to whom we are dearest, are profoundly unconscious of
+us, in an impassive state, anticipative of that mysterious condition to
+which we are all tending—the stopped life, the broken threads of
+yesterday, the deserted seat, the closed book, the unfinished but
+abandoned occupation, all are images of Death.  The tranquillity of the
+hour is the tranquillity of Death.  The colour and the chill have the
+same association.  Even a certain air that familiar household objects
+take upon them when they first emerge from the shadows of the night into
+the morning, of being newer, and as they used to be long ago, has its
+counterpart in the subsidence of the worn face of maturity or age, in
+death, into the old youthful look.  Moreover, I once saw the apparition
+of my father, at this hour.  He was alive and well, and nothing ever came
+of it, but I saw him in the daylight, sitting with his back towards me,
+on a seat that stood beside my bed.  His head was resting on his hand,
+and whether he was slumbering or grieving, I could not discern.  Amazed
+to see him there, I sat up, moved my position, leaned out of bed, and
+watched him.  As he did not move, I spoke to him more than once.  As he
+did not move then, I became alarmed and laid my hand upon his shoulder,
+as I thought—and there was no such thing.
+
+For all these reasons, and for others less easily and briefly statable, I
+find the early morning to be my most ghostly time.  Any house would be
+more or less haunted, to me, in the early morning; and a haunted house
+could scarcely address me to greater advantage than then.
+
+I walked on into the village, with the desertion of this house upon my
+mind, and I found the landlord of the little inn, sanding his door-step.
+I bespoke breakfast, and broached the subject of the house.
+
+“Is it haunted?” I asked.
+
+The landlord looked at me, shook his head, and answered, “I say nothing.”
+
+“Then it _is_ haunted?”
+
+“Well!” cried the landlord, in an outburst of frankness that had the
+appearance of desperation—“I wouldn’t sleep in it.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“If I wanted to have all the bells in a house ring, with nobody to ring
+’em; and all the doors in a house bang, with nobody to bang ’em; and all
+sorts of feet treading about, with no feet there; why, then,” said the
+landlord, “I’d sleep in that house.”
+
+“Is anything seen there?”
+
+The landlord looked at me again, and then, with his former appearance of
+desperation, called down his stable-yard for “Ikey!”
+
+The call produced a high-shouldered young fellow, with a round red face,
+a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous mouth, a turned-up
+nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with mother-of-pearl
+buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to be in a fair way—if
+it were not pruned—of covering his head and overunning his boots.
+
+“This gentleman wants to know,” said the landlord, “if anything’s seen at
+the Poplars.”
+
+“’Ooded woman with a howl,” said Ikey, in a state of great freshness.
+
+“Do you mean a cry?”
+
+“I mean a bird, sir.”
+
+“A hooded woman with an owl.  Dear me!  Did you ever see her?”
+
+“I seen the howl.”
+
+“Never the woman?”
+
+“Not so plain as the howl, but they always keeps together.”
+
+“Has anybody ever seen the woman as plainly as the owl?”
+
+“Lord bless you, sir!  Lots.”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Lord bless you, sir!  Lots.”
+
+“The general-dealer opposite, for instance, who is opening his shop?”
+
+“Perkins?  Bless you, Perkins wouldn’t go a-nigh the place.  No!”
+observed the young man, with considerable feeling; “he an’t overwise,
+an’t Perkins, but he an’t such a fool as _that_.”
+
+(Here, the landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins’s knowing better.)
+
+“Who is—or who was—the hooded woman with the owl?  Do you know?”
+
+“Well!” said Ikey, holding up his cap with one hand while he scratched
+his head with the other, “they say, in general, that she was murdered,
+and the howl he ’ooted the while.”
+
+This very concise summary of the facts was all I could learn, except that
+a young man, as hearty and likely a young man as ever I see, had been
+took with fits and held down in ’em, after seeing the hooded woman.
+Also, that a personage, dimly described as “a hold chap, a sort of
+one-eyed tramp, answering to the name of Joby, unless you challenged him
+as Greenwood, and then he said, ‘Why not? and even if so, mind your own
+business,’” had encountered the hooded woman, a matter of five or six
+times.  But, I was not materially assisted by these witnesses: inasmuch
+as the first was in California, and the last was, as Ikey said (and he
+was confirmed by the landlord), Anywheres.
+
+Now, although I regard with a hushed and solemn fear, the mysteries,
+between which and this state of existence is interposed the barrier of
+the great trial and change that fall on all the things that live; and
+although I have not the audacity to pretend that I know anything of them;
+I can no more reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing of bells,
+creaking of boards, and such-like insignificances, with the majestic
+beauty and pervading analogy of all the Divine rules that I am permitted
+to understand, than I had been able, a little while before, to yoke the
+spiritual intercourse of my fellow-traveller to the chariot of the rising
+sun.  Moreover, I had lived in two haunted houses—both abroad.  In one of
+these, an old Italian palace, which bore the reputation of being very
+badly haunted indeed, and which had recently been twice abandoned on that
+account, I lived eight months, most tranquilly and pleasantly:
+notwithstanding that the house had a score of mysterious bedrooms, which
+were never used, and possessed, in one large room in which I sat reading,
+times out of number at all hours, and next to which I slept, a haunted
+chamber of the first pretensions.  I gently hinted these considerations
+to the landlord.  And as to this particular house having a bad name, I
+reasoned with him, Why, how many things had bad names undeservedly, and
+how easy it was to give bad names, and did he not think that if he and I
+were persistently to whisper in the village that any weird-looking, old
+drunken tinker of the neighbourhood had sold himself to the Devil, he
+would come in time to be suspected of that commercial venture!  All this
+wise talk was perfectly ineffective with the landlord, I am bound to
+confess, and was as dead a failure as ever I made in my life.
+
+To cut this part of the story short, I was piqued about the haunted
+house, and was already half resolved to take it.  So, after breakfast, I
+got the keys from Perkins’s brother-in-law (a whip and harness maker, who
+keeps the Post Office, and is under submission to a most rigorous wife of
+the Doubly Seceding Little Emmanuel persuasion), and went up to the
+house, attended by my landlord and by Ikey.
+
+Within, I found it, as I had expected, transcendently dismal.  The slowly
+changing shadows waved on it from the heavy trees, were doleful in the
+last degree; the house was ill-placed, ill-built, ill-planned, and
+ill-fitted.  It was damp, it was not free from dry rot, there was a
+flavour of rats in it, and it was the gloomy victim of that indescribable
+decay which settles on all the work of man’s hands whenever it’s not
+turned to man’s account.  The kitchens and offices were too large, and
+too remote from each other.  Above stairs and below, waste tracts of
+passage intervened between patches of fertility represented by rooms; and
+there was a mouldy old well with a green growth upon it, hiding like a
+murderous trap, near the bottom of the back-stairs, under the double row
+of bells.  One of these bells was labelled, on a black ground in faded
+white letters, MASTER B.  This, they told me, was the bell that rang the
+most.
+
+“Who was Master B.?” I asked.  “Is it known what he did while the owl
+hooted?”
+
+“Rang the bell,” said Ikey.
+
+I was rather struck by the prompt dexterity with which this young man
+pitched his fur cap at the bell, and rang it himself.  It was a loud,
+unpleasant bell, and made a very disagreeable sound.  The other bells
+were inscribed according to the names of the rooms to which their wires
+were conducted: as “Picture Room,” “Double Room,” “Clock Room,” and the
+like.  Following Master B.’s bell to its source I found that young
+gentleman to have had but indifferent third-class accommodation in a
+triangular cabin under the cock-loft, with a corner fireplace which
+Master B. must have been exceedingly small if he were ever able to warm
+himself at, and a corner chimney-piece like a pyramidal staircase to the
+ceiling for Tom Thumb.  The papering of one side of the room had dropped
+down bodily, with fragments of plaster adhering to it, and almost blocked
+up the door.  It appeared that Master B., in his spiritual condition,
+always made a point of pulling the paper down.  Neither the landlord nor
+Ikey could suggest why he made such a fool of himself.
+
+Except that the house had an immensely large rambling loft at top, I made
+no other discoveries.  It was moderately well furnished, but sparely.
+Some of the furniture—say, a third—was as old as the house; the rest was
+of various periods within the last half-century.  I was referred to a
+corn-chandler in the market-place of the county town to treat for the
+house.  I went that day, and I took it for six months.
+
+It was just the middle of October when I moved in with my maiden sister
+(I venture to call her eight-and-thirty, she is so very handsome,
+sensible, and engaging).  We took with us, a deaf stable-man, my
+bloodhound Turk, two women servants, and a young person called an Odd
+Girl.  I have reason to record of the attendant last enumerated, who was
+one of the Saint Lawrence’s Union Female Orphans, that she was a fatal
+mistake and a disastrous engagement.
+
+The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was a raw cold
+day when we took possession, and the gloom of the house was most
+depressing.  The cook (an amiable woman, but of a weak turn of intellect)
+burst into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that her silver
+watch might be delivered over to her sister (2 Tuppintock’s Gardens,
+Liggs’s Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of anything happening to her
+from the damp.  Streaker, the housemaid, feigned cheerfulness, but was
+the greater martyr.  The Odd Girl, who had never been in the country,
+alone was pleased, and made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the
+garden outside the scullery window, and rearing an oak.
+
+We went, before dark, through all the natural—as opposed to
+supernatural—miseries incidental to our state.  Dispiriting reports
+ascended (like the smoke) from the basement in volumes, and descended
+from the upper rooms.  There was no rolling-pin, there was no salamander
+(which failed to surprise me, for I don’t know what it is), there was
+nothing in the house, what there was, was broken, the last people must
+have lived like pigs, what could the meaning of the landlord be?  Through
+these distresses, the Odd Girl was cheerful and exemplary.  But within
+four hours after dark we had got into a supernatural groove, and the Odd
+Girl had seen “Eyes,” and was in hysterics.
+
+My sister and I had agreed to keep the haunting strictly to ourselves,
+and my impression was, and still is, that I had not left Ikey, when he
+helped to unload the cart, alone with the women, or any one of them, for
+one minute.  Nevertheless, as I say, the Odd Girl had “seen Eyes” (no
+other explanation could ever be drawn from her), before nine, and by ten
+o’clock had had as much vinegar applied to her as would pickle a handsome
+salmon.
+
+I leave a discerning public to judge of my feelings, when, under these
+untoward circumstances, at about half-past ten o’clock Master B.’s bell
+began to ring in a most infuriated manner, and Turk howled until the
+house resounded with his lamentations!
+
+I hope I may never again be in a state of mind so unchristian as the
+mental frame in which I lived for some weeks, respecting the memory of
+Master B.  Whether his bell was rung by rats, or mice, or bats, or wind,
+or what other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one cause, sometimes
+another, and sometimes by collusion, I don’t know; but, certain it is,
+that it did ring two nights out of three, until I conceived the happy
+idea of twisting Master B.’s neck—in other words, breaking his bell short
+off—and silencing that young gentleman, as to my experience and belief,
+for ever.
+
+But, by that time, the Odd Girl had developed such improving powers of
+catalepsy, that she had become a shining example of that very
+inconvenient disorder.  She would stiffen, like a Guy Fawkes endowed with
+unreason, on the most irrelevant occasions.  I would address the servants
+in a lucid manner, pointing out to them that I had painted Master B.’s
+room and balked the paper, and taken Master B.’s bell away and balked the
+ringing, and if they could suppose that that confounded boy had lived and
+died, to clothe himself with no better behaviour than would most
+unquestionably have brought him and the sharpest particles of a
+birch-broom into close acquaintance in the present imperfect state of
+existence, could they also suppose a mere poor human being, such as I
+was, capable by those contemptible means of counteracting and limiting
+the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?—I
+say I would become emphatic and cogent, not to say rather complacent, in
+such an address, when it would all go for nothing by reason of the Odd
+Girl’s suddenly stiffening from the toes upward, and glaring among us
+like a parochial petrifaction.
+
+Streaker, the housemaid, too, had an attribute of a most discomfiting
+nature.  I am unable to say whether she was of an unusually lymphatic
+temperament, or what else was the matter with her, but this young woman
+became a mere Distillery for the production of the largest and most
+transparent tears I ever met with.  Combined with these characteristics,
+was a peculiar tenacity of hold in those specimens, so that they didn’t
+fall, but hung upon her face and nose.  In this condition, and mildly and
+deplorably shaking her head, her silence would throw me more heavily than
+the Admirable Crichton could have done in a verbal disputation for a
+purse of money.  Cook, likewise, always covered me with confusion as with
+a garment, by neatly winding up the session with the protest that the
+Ouse was wearing her out, and by meekly repeating her last wishes
+regarding her silver watch.
+
+As to our nightly life, the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us,
+and there is no such contagion under the sky.  Hooded woman?  According
+to the accounts, we were in a perfect Convent of hooded women.  Noises?
+With that contagion downstairs, I myself have sat in the dismal parlour,
+listening, until I have heard so many and such strange noises, that they
+would have chilled my blood if I had not warmed it by dashing out to make
+discoveries.  Try this in bed, in the dead of the night: try this at your
+own comfortable fire-side, in the life of the night.  You can fill any
+house with noises, if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in
+your nervous system.
+
+I repeat; the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and there is
+no such contagion under the sky.  The women (their noses in a chronic
+state of excoriation from smelling-salts) were always primed and loaded
+for a swoon, and ready to go off with hair-triggers.  The two elder
+detached the Odd Girl on all expeditions that were considered doubly
+hazardous, and she always established the reputation of such adventures
+by coming back cataleptic.  If Cook or Streaker went overhead after dark,
+we knew we should presently hear a bump on the ceiling; and this took
+place so constantly, that it was as if a fighting man were engaged to go
+about the house, administering a touch of his art which I believe is
+called The Auctioneer, to every domestic he met with.
+
+It was in vain to do anything.  It was in vain to be frightened, for the
+moment in one’s own person, by a real owl, and then to show the owl.  It
+was in vain to discover, by striking an accidental discord on the piano,
+that Turk always howled at particular notes and combinations.  It was in
+vain to be a Rhadamanthus with the bells, and if an unfortunate bell rang
+without leave, to have it down inexorably and silence it.  It was in vain
+to fire up chimneys, let torches down the well, charge furiously into
+suspected rooms and recesses.  We changed servants, and it was no better.
+The new set ran away, and a third set came, and it was no better.  At
+last, our comfortable housekeeping got to be so disorganised and
+wretched, that I one night dejectedly said to my sister: “Patty, I begin
+to despair of our getting people to go on with us here, and I think we
+must give this up.”
+
+My sister, who is a woman of immense spirit, replied, “No, John, don’t
+give it up.  Don’t be beaten, John.  There is another way.”
+
+“And what is that?” said I.
+
+“John,” returned my sister, “if we are not to be driven out of this
+house, and that for no reason whatever, that is apparent to you or me, we
+must help ourselves and take the house wholly and solely into our own
+hands.”
+
+“But, the servants,” said I.
+
+“Have no servants,” said my sister, boldly.
+
+Like most people in my grade of life, I had never thought of the
+possibility of going on without those faithful obstructions.  The notion
+was so new to me when suggested, that I looked very doubtful.  “We know
+they come here to be frightened and infect one another, and we know they
+are frightened and do infect one another,” said my sister.
+
+“With the exception of Bottles,” I observed, in a meditative tone.
+
+(The deaf stable-man.  I kept him in my service, and still keep him, as a
+phenomenon of moroseness not to be matched in England.)
+
+“To be sure, John,” assented my sister; “except Bottles.  And what does
+that go to prove?  Bottles talks to nobody, and hears nobody unless he is
+absolutely roared at, and what alarm has Bottles ever given, or taken!
+None.”
+
+This was perfectly true; the individual in question having retired, every
+night at ten o’clock, to his bed over the coach-house, with no other
+company than a pitchfork and a pail of water.  That the pail of water
+would have been over me, and the pitchfork through me, if I had put
+myself without announcement in Bottles’s way after that minute, I had
+deposited in my own mind as a fact worth remembering.  Neither had
+Bottles ever taken the least notice of any of our many uproars.  An
+imperturbable and speechless man, he had sat at his supper, with Streaker
+present in a swoon, and the Odd Girl marble, and had only put another
+potato in his cheek, or profited by the general misery to help himself to
+beefsteak pie.
+
+“And so,” continued my sister, “I exempt Bottles.  And considering, John,
+that the house is too large, and perhaps too lonely, to be kept well in
+hand by Bottles, you, and me, I propose that we cast about among our
+friends for a certain selected number of the most reliable and
+willing—form a Society here for three months—wait upon ourselves and one
+another—live cheerfully and socially—and see what happens.”
+
+I was so charmed with my sister, that I embraced her on the spot, and
+went into her plan with the greatest ardour.
+
+We were then in the third week of November; but, we took our measures so
+vigorously, and were so well seconded by the friends in whom we confided,
+that there was still a week of the month unexpired, when our party all
+came down together merrily, and mustered in the haunted house.
+
+I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I made while my
+sister and I were yet alone.  It occurring to me as not improbable that
+Turk howled in the house at night, partly because he wanted to get out of
+it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but unchained; and I seriously
+warned the village that any man who came in his way must not expect to
+leave him without a rip in his own throat.  I then casually asked Ikey if
+he were a judge of a gun?  On his saying, “Yes, sir, I knows a good gun
+when I sees her,” I begged the favour of his stepping up to the house and
+looking at mine.
+
+“_She’s_ a true one, sir,” said Ikey, after inspecting a double-barrelled
+rifle that I bought in New York a few years ago.  “No mistake about
+_her_, sir.”
+
+“Ikey,” said I, “don’t mention it; I have seen something in this house.”
+
+“No, sir?” he whispered, greedily opening his eyes.  “’Ooded lady, sir?”
+
+“Don’t be frightened,” said I.  “It was a figure rather like you.”
+
+“Lord, sir?”
+
+“Ikey!” said I, shaking hands with him warmly: I may say affectionately;
+“if there is any truth in these ghost-stories, the greatest service I can
+do you, is, to fire at that figure.  And I promise you, by Heaven and
+earth, I will do it with this gun if I see it again!”
+
+The young man thanked me, and took his leave with some little
+precipitation, after declining a glass of liquor.  I imparted my secret
+to him, because I had never quite forgotten his throwing his cap at the
+bell; because I had, on another occasion, noticed something very like a
+fur cap, lying not far from the bell, one night when it had burst out
+ringing; and because I had remarked that we were at our ghostliest
+whenever he came up in the evening to comfort the servants.  Let me do
+Ikey no injustice.  He was afraid of the house, and believed in its being
+haunted; and yet he would play false on the haunting side, so surely as
+he got an opportunity.  The Odd Girl’s case was exactly similar.  She
+went about the house in a state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously
+and wilfully, and invented many of the alarms she spread, and made many
+of the sounds we heard.  I had had my eye on the two, and I know it.  It
+is not necessary for me, here, to account for this preposterous state of
+mind; I content myself with remarking that it is familiarly known to
+every intelligent man who has had fair medical, legal, or other watchful
+experience; that it is as well established and as common a state of mind
+as any with which observers are acquainted; and that it is one of the
+first elements, above all others, rationally to be suspected in, and
+strictly looked for, and separated from, any question of this kind.
+
+To return to our party.  The first thing we did when we were all
+assembled, was, to draw lots for bedrooms.  That done, and every bedroom,
+and, indeed, the whole house, having been minutely examined by the whole
+body, we allotted the various household duties, as if we had been on a
+gipsy party, or a yachting party, or a hunting party, or were
+shipwrecked.  I then recounted the floating rumours concerning the hooded
+lady, the owl, and Master B.: with others, still more filmy, which had
+floated about during our occupation, relative to some ridiculous old
+ghost of the female gender who went up and down, carrying the ghost of a
+round table; and also to an impalpable Jackass, whom nobody was ever able
+to catch.  Some of these ideas I really believe our people below had
+communicated to one another in some diseased way, without conveying them
+in words.  We then gravely called one another to witness, that we were
+not there to be deceived, or to deceive—which we considered pretty much
+the same thing—and that, with a serious sense of responsibility, we would
+be strictly true to one another, and would strictly follow out the truth.
+The understanding was established, that any one who heard unusual noises
+in the night, and who wished to trace them, should knock at my door;
+lastly, that on Twelfth Night, the last night of holy Christmas, all our
+individual experiences since that then present hour of our coming
+together in the haunted house, should be brought to light for the good of
+all; and that we would hold our peace on the subject till then, unless on
+some remarkable provocation to break silence.
+
+We were, in number and in character, as follows:
+
+First—to get my sister and myself out of the way—there were we two.  In
+the drawing of lots, my sister drew her own room, and I drew Master B.’s.
+Next, there was our first cousin John Herschel, so called after the great
+astronomer: than whom I suppose a better man at a telescope does not
+breathe.  With him, was his wife: a charming creature to whom he had been
+married in the previous spring.  I thought it (under the circumstances)
+rather imprudent to bring her, because there is no knowing what even a
+false alarm may do at such a time; but I suppose he knew his own business
+best, and I must say that if she had been _my_ wife, I never could have
+left her endearing and bright face behind.  They drew the Clock Room.
+Alfred Starling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight-and-twenty
+for whom I have the greatest liking, was in the Double Room; mine,
+usually, and designated by that name from having a dressing-room within
+it, with two large and cumbersome windows, which no wedges _I_ was ever
+able to make, would keep from shaking, in any weather, wind or no wind.
+Alfred is a young fellow who pretends to be “fast” (another word for
+loose, as I understand the term), but who is much too good and sensible
+for that nonsense, and who would have distinguished himself before now,
+if his father had not unfortunately left him a small independence of two
+hundred a year, on the strength of which his only occupation in life has
+been to spend six.  I am in hopes, however, that his Banker may break, or
+that he may enter into some speculation guaranteed to pay twenty per
+cent.; for, I am convinced that if he could only be ruined, his fortune
+is made.  Belinda Bates, bosom friend of my sister, and a most
+intellectual, amiable, and delightful girl, got the Picture Room.  She
+has a fine genius for poetry, combined with real business earnestness,
+and “goes in”—to use an expression of Alfred’s—for Woman’s mission,
+Woman’s rights, Woman’s wrongs, and everything that is woman’s with a
+capital W, or is not and ought to be, or is and ought not to be.  “Most
+praiseworthy, my dear, and Heaven prosper you!” I whispered to her on the
+first night of my taking leave of her at the Picture-Room door, “but
+don’t overdo it.  And in respect of the great necessity there is, my
+darling, for more employments being within the reach of Woman than our
+civilisation has as yet assigned to her, don’t fly at the unfortunate
+men, even those men who are at first sight in your way, as if they were
+the natural oppressors of your sex; for, trust me, Belinda, they do
+sometimes spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters, mothers,
+aunts, and grandmothers; and the play is, really, not _all_ Wolf and Red
+Riding-Hood, but has other parts in it.”  However, I digress.
+
+Belinda, as I have mentioned, occupied the Picture Room.  We had but
+three other chambers: the Corner Room, the Cupboard Room, and the Garden
+Room.  My old friend, Jack Governor, “slung his hammock,” as he called
+it, in the Corner Room.  I have always regarded Jack as the
+finest-looking sailor that ever sailed.  He is gray now, but as handsome
+as he was a quarter of a century ago—nay, handsomer.  A portly, cheery,
+well-built figure of a broad-shouldered man, with a frank smile, a
+brilliant dark eye, and a rich dark eyebrow.  I remember those under
+darker hair, and they look all the better for their silver setting.  He
+has been wherever his Union namesake flies, has Jack, and I have met old
+shipmates of his, away in the Mediterranean and on the other side of the
+Atlantic, who have beamed and brightened at the casual mention of his
+name, and have cried, “You know Jack Governor?  Then you know a prince of
+men!”  That he is!  And so unmistakably a naval officer, that if you were
+to meet him coming out of an Esquimaux snow-hut in seal’s skin, you would
+be vaguely persuaded he was in full naval uniform.
+
+Jack once had that bright clear eye of his on my sister; but, it fell out
+that he married another lady and took her to South America, where she
+died.  This was a dozen years ago or more.  He brought down with him to
+our haunted house a little cask of salt beef; for, he is always convinced
+that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion, and
+invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau.  He
+had also volunteered to bring with him one “Nat Beaver,” an old comrade
+of his, captain of a merchantman.  Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden
+face and figure, and apparently as hard as a block all over, proved to be
+an intelligent man, with a world of watery experiences in him, and great
+practical knowledge.  At times, there was a curious nervousness about
+him, apparently the lingering result of some old illness; but, it seldom
+lasted many minutes.  He got the Cupboard Room, and lay there next to Mr.
+Undery, my friend and solicitor: who came down, in an amateur capacity,
+“to go through with it,” as he said, and who plays whist better than the
+whole Law List, from the red cover at the beginning to the red cover at
+the end.
+
+I never was happier in my life, and I believe it was the universal
+feeling among us.  Jack Governor, always a man of wonderful resources,
+was Chief Cook, and made some of the best dishes I ever ate, including
+unapproachable curries.  My sister was pastrycook and confectioner.
+Starling and I were Cook’s Mate, turn and turn about, and on special
+occasions the chief cook “pressed” Mr. Beaver.  We had a great deal of
+out-door sport and exercise, but nothing was neglected within, and there
+was no ill-humour or misunderstanding among us, and our evenings were so
+delightful that we had at least one good reason for being reluctant to go
+to bed.
+
+We had a few night alarms in the beginning.  On the first night, I was
+knocked up by Jack with a most wonderful ship’s lantern in his hand, like
+the gills of some monster of the deep, who informed me that he “was going
+aloft to the main truck,” to have the weathercock down.  It was a stormy
+night and I remonstrated; but Jack called my attention to its making a
+sound like a cry of despair, and said somebody would be “hailing a ghost”
+presently, if it wasn’t done.  So, up to the top of the house, where I
+could hardly stand for the wind, we went, accompanied by Mr. Beaver; and
+there Jack, lantern and all, with Mr. Beaver after him, swarmed up to the
+top of a cupola, some two dozen feet above the chimneys, and stood upon
+nothing particular, coolly knocking the weathercock off, until they both
+got into such good spirits with the wind and the height, that I thought
+they would never come down.  Another night, they turned out again, and
+had a chimney-cowl off.  Another night, they cut a sobbing and gulping
+water-pipe away.  Another night, they found out something else.  On
+several occasions, they both, in the coolest manner, simultaneously
+dropped out of their respective bedroom windows, hand over hand by their
+counterpanes, to “overhaul” something mysterious in the garden.
+
+The engagement among us was faithfully kept, and nobody revealed
+anything.  All we knew was, if any one’s room were haunted, no one looked
+the worse for it.
+
+
+
+THE GHOST IN MASTER B.’S ROOM.
+
+
+WHEN I established myself in the triangular garret which had gained so
+distinguished a reputation, my thoughts naturally turned to Master B.  My
+speculations about him were uneasy and manifold.  Whether his Christian
+name was Benjamin, Bissextile (from his having been born in Leap Year),
+Bartholomew, or Bill.  Whether the initial letter belonged to his family
+name, and that was Baxter, Black, Brown, Barker, Buggins, Baker, or Bird.
+Whether he was a foundling, and had been baptized B.  Whether he was a
+lion-hearted boy, and B. was short for Briton, or for Bull.  Whether he
+could possibly have been kith and kin to an illustrious lady who
+brightened my own childhood, and had come of the blood of the brilliant
+Mother Bunch?
+
+With these profitless meditations I tormented myself much.  I also
+carried the mysterious letter into the appearance and pursuits of the
+deceased; wondering whether he dressed in Blue, wore Boots (he couldn’t
+have been Bald), was a boy of Brains, liked Books, was good at Bowling,
+had any skill as a Boxer, even in his Buoyant Boyhood Bathed from a
+Bathing-machine at Bognor, Bangor, Bournemouth, Brighton, or Broadstairs,
+like a Bounding Billiard Ball?
+
+So, from the first, I was haunted by the letter B.
+
+It was not long before I remarked that I never by any hazard had a dream
+of Master B., or of anything belonging to him.  But, the instant I awoke
+from sleep, at whatever hour of the night, my thoughts took him up, and
+roamed away, trying to attach his initial letter to something that would
+fit it and keep it quiet.
+
+For six nights, I had been worried thus in Master B.’s room, when I began
+to perceive that things were going wrong.
+
+The first appearance that presented itself was early in the morning when
+it was but just daylight and no more.  I was standing shaving at my
+glass, when I suddenly discovered, to my consternation and amazement,
+that I was shaving—not myself—I am fifty—but a boy.  Apparently Master
+B.!
+
+I trembled and looked over my shoulder; nothing there.  I looked again in
+the glass, and distinctly saw the features and expression of a boy, who
+was shaving, not to get rid of a beard, but to get one.  Extremely
+troubled in my mind, I took a few turns in the room, and went back to the
+looking-glass, resolved to steady my hand and complete the operation in
+which I had been disturbed.  Opening my eyes, which I had shut while
+recovering my firmness, I now met in the glass, looking straight at me,
+the eyes of a young man of four or five and twenty.  Terrified by this
+new ghost, I closed my eyes, and made a strong effort to recover myself.
+Opening them again, I saw, shaving his cheek in the glass, my father, who
+has long been dead.  Nay, I even saw my grandfather too, whom I never did
+see in my life.
+
+Although naturally much affected by these remarkable visitations, I
+determined to keep my secret, until the time agreed upon for the present
+general disclosure.  Agitated by a multitude of curious thoughts, I
+retired to my room, that night, prepared to encounter some new experience
+of a spectral character.  Nor was my preparation needless, for, waking
+from an uneasy sleep at exactly two o’clock in the morning, what were my
+feelings to find that I was sharing my bed with the skeleton of Master
+B.!
+
+I sprang up, and the skeleton sprang up also.  I then heard a plaintive
+voice saying, “Where am I?  What is become of me?” and, looking hard in
+that direction, perceived the ghost of Master B.
+
+The young spectre was dressed in an obsolete fashion: or rather, was not
+so much dressed as put into a case of inferior pepper-and-salt cloth,
+made horrible by means of shining buttons.  I observed that these buttons
+went, in a double row, over each shoulder of the young ghost, and
+appeared to descend his back.  He wore a frill round his neck.  His right
+hand (which I distinctly noticed to be inky) was laid upon his stomach;
+connecting this action with some feeble pimples on his countenance, and
+his general air of nausea, I concluded this ghost to be the ghost of a
+boy who had habitually taken a great deal too much medicine.
+
+“Where am I?” said the little spectre, in a pathetic voice.  “And why was
+I born in the Calomel days, and why did I have all that Calomel given
+me?”
+
+I replied, with sincere earnestness, that upon my soul I couldn’t tell
+him.
+
+“Where is my little sister,” said the ghost, “and where my angelic little
+wife, and where is the boy I went to school with?”
+
+I entreated the phantom to be comforted, and above all things to take
+heart respecting the loss of the boy he went to school with.  I
+represented to him that probably that boy never did, within human
+experience, come out well, when discovered.  I urged that I myself had,
+in later life, turned up several boys whom I went to school with, and
+none of them had at all answered.  I expressed my humble belief that that
+boy never did answer.  I represented that he was a mythic character, a
+delusion, and a snare.  I recounted how, the last time I found him, I
+found him at a dinner party behind a wall of white cravat, with an
+inconclusive opinion on every possible subject, and a power of silent
+boredom absolutely Titanic.  I related how, on the strength of our having
+been together at “Old Doylance’s,” he had asked himself to breakfast with
+me (a social offence of the largest magnitude); how, fanning my weak
+embers of belief in Doylance’s boys, I had let him in; and how, he had
+proved to be a fearful wanderer about the earth, pursuing the race of
+Adam with inexplicable notions concerning the currency, and with a
+proposition that the Bank of England should, on pain of being abolished,
+instantly strike off and circulate, God knows how many thousand millions
+of ten-and-sixpenny notes.
+
+The ghost heard me in silence, and with a fixed stare.  “Barber!” it
+apostrophised me when I had finished.
+
+“Barber?” I repeated—for I am not of that profession.
+
+“Condemned,” said the ghost, “to shave a constant change of
+customers—now, me—now, a young man—now, thyself as thou art—now, thy
+father—now, thy grandfather; condemned, too, to lie down with a skeleton
+every night, and to rise with it every morning—”
+
+(I shuddered on hearing this dismal announcement.)
+
+“Barber!  Pursue me!”
+
+I had felt, even before the words were uttered, that I was under a spell
+to pursue the phantom.  I immediately did so, and was in Master B.’s room
+no longer.
+
+Most people know what long and fatiguing night journeys had been forced
+upon the witches who used to confess, and who, no doubt, told the exact
+truth—particularly as they were always assisted with leading questions,
+and the Torture was always ready.  I asseverate that, during my
+occupation of Master B.’s room, I was taken by the ghost that haunted it,
+on expeditions fully as long and wild as any of those.  Assuredly, I was
+presented to no shabby old man with a goat’s horns and tail (something
+between Pan and an old clothesman), holding conventional receptions, as
+stupid as those of real life and less decent; but, I came upon other
+things which appeared to me to have more meaning.
+
+Confident that I speak the truth and shall be believed, I declare without
+hesitation that I followed the ghost, in the first instance on a
+broom-stick, and afterwards on a rocking-horse.  The very smell of the
+animal’s paint—especially when I brought it out, by making him warm—I am
+ready to swear to.  I followed the ghost, afterwards, in a hackney coach;
+an institution with the peculiar smell of which, the present generation
+is unacquainted, but to which I am again ready to swear as a combination
+of stable, dog with the mange, and very old bellows.  (In this, I appeal
+to previous generations to confirm or refute me.)  I pursued the phantom,
+on a headless donkey: at least, upon a donkey who was so interested in
+the state of his stomach that his head was always down there,
+investigating it; on ponies, expressly born to kick up behind; on
+roundabouts and swings, from fairs; in the first cab—another forgotten
+institution where the fare regularly got into bed, and was tucked up with
+the driver.
+
+Not to trouble you with a detailed account of all my travels in pursuit
+of the ghost of Master B., which were longer and more wonderful than
+those of Sinbad the Sailor, I will confine myself to one experience from
+which you may judge of many.
+
+I was marvellously changed.  I was myself, yet not myself.  I was
+conscious of something within me, which has been the same all through my
+life, and which I have always recognised under all its phases and
+varieties as never altering, and yet I was not the I who had gone to bed
+in Master B.’s room.  I had the smoothest of faces and the shortest of
+legs, and I had taken another creature like myself, also with the
+smoothest of faces and the shortest of legs, behind a door, and was
+confiding to him a proposition of the most astounding nature.
+
+This proposition was, that we should have a Seraglio.
+
+The other creature assented warmly.  He had no notion of respectability,
+neither had I.  It was the custom of the East, it was the way of the good
+Caliph Haroun Alraschid (let me have the corrupted name again for once,
+it is so scented with sweet memories!), the usage was highly laudable,
+and most worthy of imitation.  “O, yes!  Let us,” said the other creature
+with a jump, “have a Seraglio.”
+
+It was not because we entertained the faintest doubts of the meritorious
+character of the Oriental establishment we proposed to import, that we
+perceived it must be kept a secret from Miss Griffin.  It was because we
+knew Miss Griffin to be bereft of human sympathies, and incapable of
+appreciating the greatness of the great Haroun.  Mystery impenetrably
+shrouded from Miss Griffin then, let us entrust it to Miss Bule.
+
+We were ten in Miss Griffin’s establishment by Hampstead Ponds; eight
+ladies and two gentlemen.  Miss Bule, whom I judge to have attained the
+ripe age of eight or nine, took the lead in society.  I opened the
+subject to her in the course of the day, and proposed that she should
+become the Favourite.
+
+Miss Bule, after struggling with the diffidence so natural to, and
+charming in, her adorable sex, expressed herself as flattered by the
+idea, but wished to know how it was proposed to provide for Miss Pipson?
+Miss Bule—who was understood to have vowed towards that young lady, a
+friendship, halves, and no secrets, until death, on the Church Service
+and Lessons complete in two volumes with case and lock—Miss Bule said she
+could not, as the friend of Pipson, disguise from herself, or me, that
+Pipson was not one of the common.
+
+Now, Miss Pipson, having curly hair and blue eyes (which was my idea of
+anything mortal and feminine that was called Fair), I promptly replied
+that I regarded Miss Pipson in the light of a Fair Circassian.
+
+“And what then?” Miss Bule pensively asked.
+
+I replied that she must be inveigled by a Merchant, brought to me veiled,
+and purchased as a slave.
+
+[The other creature had already fallen into the second male place in the
+State, and was set apart for Grand Vizier.  He afterwards resisted this
+disposal of events, but had his hair pulled until he yielded.]
+
+“Shall I not be jealous?” Miss Bule inquired, casting down her eyes.
+
+“Zobeide, no,” I replied; “you will ever be the favourite Sultana; the
+first place in my heart, and on my throne, will be ever yours.”
+
+Miss Bule, upon that assurance, consented to propound the idea to her
+seven beautiful companions.  It occurring to me, in the course of the
+same day, that we knew we could trust a grinning and good-natured soul
+called Tabby, who was the serving drudge of the house, and had no more
+figure than one of the beds, and upon whose face there was always more or
+less black-lead, I slipped into Miss Bule’s hand after supper, a little
+note to that effect; dwelling on the black-lead as being in a manner
+deposited by the finger of Providence, pointing Tabby out for Mesrour,
+the celebrated chief of the Blacks of the Hareem.
+
+There were difficulties in the formation of the desired institution, as
+there are in all combinations.  The other creature showed himself of a
+low character, and, when defeated in aspiring to the throne, pretended to
+have conscientious scruples about prostrating himself before the Caliph;
+wouldn’t call him Commander of the Faithful; spoke of him slightingly and
+inconsistently as a mere “chap;” said he, the other creature, “wouldn’t
+play”—Play!—and was otherwise coarse and offensive.  This meanness of
+disposition was, however, put down by the general indignation of an
+united Seraglio, and I became blessed in the smiles of eight of the
+fairest of the daughters of men.
+
+The smiles could only be bestowed when Miss Griffin was looking another
+way, and only then in a very wary manner, for there was a legend among
+the followers of the Prophet that she saw with a little round ornament in
+the middle of the pattern on the back of her shawl.  But every day after
+dinner, for an hour, we were all together, and then the Favourite and the
+rest of the Royal Hareem competed who should most beguile the leisure of
+the Serene Haroun reposing from the cares of State—which were generally,
+as in most affairs of State, of an arithmetical character, the Commander
+of the Faithful being a fearful boggler at a sum.
+
+On these occasions, the devoted Mesrour, chief of the Blacks of the
+Hareem, was always in attendance (Miss Griffin usually ringing for that
+officer, at the same time, with great vehemence), but never acquitted
+himself in a manner worthy of his historical reputation.  In the first
+place, his bringing a broom into the Divan of the Caliph, even when
+Haroun wore on his shoulders the red robe of anger (Miss Pipson’s
+pelisse), though it might be got over for the moment, was never to be
+quite satisfactorily accounted for.  In the second place, his breaking
+out into grinning exclamations of “Lork you pretties!” was neither
+Eastern nor respectful.  In the third place, when specially instructed to
+say “Bismillah!” he always said “Hallelujah!”  This officer, unlike his
+class, was too good-humoured altogether, kept his mouth open far too
+wide, expressed approbation to an incongruous extent, and even once—it
+was on the occasion of the purchase of the Fair Circassian for five
+hundred thousand purses of gold, and cheap, too—embraced the Slave, the
+Favourite, and the Caliph, all round.  (Parenthetically let me say God
+bless Mesrour, and may there have been sons and daughters on that tender
+bosom, softening many a hard day since!)
+
+Miss Griffin was a model of propriety, and I am at a loss to imagine what
+the feelings of the virtuous woman would have been, if she had known,
+when she paraded us down the Hampstead Road two and two, that she was
+walking with a stately step at the head of Polygamy and Mahomedanism.  I
+believe that a mysterious and terrible joy with which the contemplation
+of Miss Griffin, in this unconscious state, inspired us, and a grim sense
+prevalent among us that there was a dreadful power in our knowledge of
+what Miss Griffin (who knew all things that could be learnt out of book)
+didn’t know, were the main-spring of the preservation of our secret.  It
+was wonderfully kept, but was once upon the verge of self-betrayal.  The
+danger and escape occurred upon a Sunday.  We were all ten ranged in a
+conspicuous part of the gallery at church, with Miss Griffin at our
+head—as we were every Sunday—advertising the establishment in an
+unsecular sort of way—when the description of Solomon in his domestic
+glory happened to be read.  The moment that monarch was thus referred to,
+conscience whispered me, “Thou, too, Haroun!”  The officiating minister
+had a cast in his eye, and it assisted conscience by giving him the
+appearance of reading personally at me.  A crimson blush, attended by a
+fearful perspiration, suffused my features.  The Grand Vizier became more
+dead than alive, and the whole Seraglio reddened as if the sunset of
+Bagdad shone direct upon their lovely faces.  At this portentous time the
+awful Griffin rose, and balefully surveyed the children of Islam.  My own
+impression was, that Church and State had entered into a conspiracy with
+Miss Griffin to expose us, and that we should all be put into white
+sheets, and exhibited in the centre aisle.  But, so Westerly—if I may be
+allowed the expression as opposite to Eastern associations—was Miss
+Griffin’s sense of rectitude, that she merely suspected Apples, and we
+were saved.
+
+I have called the Seraglio, united.  Upon the question, solely, whether
+the Commander of the Faithful durst exercise a right of kissing in that
+sanctuary of the palace, were its peerless inmates divided.  Zobeide
+asserted a counter-right in the Favourite to scratch, and the fair
+Circassian put her face, for refuge, into a green baize bag, originally
+designed for books.  On the other hand, a young antelope of transcendent
+beauty from the fruitful plains of Camden Town (whence she had been
+brought, by traders, in the half-yearly caravan that crossed the
+intermediate desert after the holidays), held more liberal opinions, but
+stipulated for limiting the benefit of them to that dog, and son of a
+dog, the Grand Vizier—who had no rights, and was not in question.  At
+length, the difficulty was compromised by the installation of a very
+youthful slave as Deputy.  She, raised upon a stool, officially received
+upon her cheeks the salutes intended by the gracious Haroun for other
+Sultanas, and was privately rewarded from the coffers of the Ladies of
+the Hareem.
+
+And now it was, at the full height of enjoyment of my bliss, that I
+became heavily troubled.  I began to think of my mother, and what she
+would say to my taking home at Midsummer eight of the most beautiful of
+the daughters of men, but all unexpected.  I thought of the number of
+beds we made up at our house, of my father’s income, and of the baker,
+and my despondency redoubled.  The Seraglio and malicious Vizier,
+divining the cause of their Lord’s unhappiness, did their utmost to
+augment it.  They professed unbounded fidelity, and declared that they
+would live and die with him.  Reduced to the utmost wretchedness by these
+protestations of attachment, I lay awake, for hours at a time, ruminating
+on my frightful lot.  In my despair, I think I might have taken an early
+opportunity of falling on my knees before Miss Griffin, avowing my
+resemblance to Solomon, and praying to be dealt with according to the
+outraged laws of my country, if an unthought-of means of escape had not
+opened before me.
+
+One day, we were out walking, two and two—on which occasion the Vizier
+had his usual instructions to take note of the boy at the turnpike, and
+if he profanely gazed (which he always did) at the beauties of the
+Hareem, to have him bowstrung in the course of the night—and it happened
+that our hearts were veiled in gloom.  An unaccountable action on the
+part of the antelope had plunged the State into disgrace.  That charmer,
+on the representation that the previous day was her birthday, and that
+vast treasures had been sent in a hamper for its celebration (both
+baseless assertions), had secretly but most pressingly invited
+thirty-five neighbouring princes and princesses to a ball and supper:
+with a special stipulation that they were “not to be fetched till
+twelve.”  This wandering of the antelope’s fancy, led to the surprising
+arrival at Miss Griffin’s door, in divers equipages and under various
+escorts, of a great company in full dress, who were deposited on the top
+step in a flush of high expectancy, and who were dismissed in tears.  At
+the beginning of the double knocks attendant on these ceremonies, the
+antelope had retired to a back attic, and bolted herself in; and at every
+new arrival, Miss Griffin had gone so much more and more distracted, that
+at last she had been seen to tear her front.  Ultimate capitulation on
+the part of the offender, had been followed by solitude in the
+linen-closet, bread and water and a lecture to all, of vindictive length,
+in which Miss Griffin had used expressions: Firstly, “I believe you all
+of you knew of it;” Secondly, “Every one of you is as wicked as another;”
+Thirdly, “A pack of little wretches.”
+
+Under these circumstances, we were walking drearily along; and I
+especially, with my Moosulmaun responsibilities heavy on me, was in a
+very low state of mind; when a strange man accosted Miss Griffin, and,
+after walking on at her side for a little while and talking with her,
+looked at me.  Supposing him to be a minion of the law, and that my hour
+was come, I instantly ran away, with the general purpose of making for
+Egypt.
+
+The whole Seraglio cried out, when they saw me making off as fast as my
+legs would carry me (I had an impression that the first turning on the
+left, and round by the public-house, would be the shortest way to the
+Pyramids), Miss Griffin screamed after me, the faithless Vizier ran after
+me, and the boy at the turnpike dodged me into a corner, like a sheep,
+and cut me off.  Nobody scolded me when I was taken and brought back;
+Miss Griffin only said, with a stunning gentleness, This was very
+curious!  Why had I run away when the gentleman looked at me?
+
+If I had had any breath to answer with, I dare say I should have made no
+answer; having no breath, I certainly made none.  Miss Griffin and the
+strange man took me between them, and walked me back to the palace in a
+sort of state; but not at all (as I couldn’t help feeling, with
+astonishment) in culprit state.
+
+When we got there, we went into a room by ourselves, and Miss Griffin
+called in to her assistance, Mesrour, chief of the dusky guards of the
+Hareem.  Mesrour, on being whispered to, began to shed tears.  “Bless
+you, my precious!” said that officer, turning to me; “your Pa’s took
+bitter bad!”
+
+I asked, with a fluttered heart, “Is he very ill?”
+
+“Lord temper the wind to you, my lamb!” said the good Mesrour, kneeling
+down, that I might have a comforting shoulder for my head to rest on,
+“your Pa’s dead!”
+
+Haroun Alraschid took to flight at the words; the Seraglio vanished; from
+that moment, I never again saw one of the eight of the fairest of the
+daughters of men.
+
+I was taken home, and there was Debt at home as well as Death, and we had
+a sale there.  My own little bed was so superciliously looked upon by a
+Power unknown to me, hazily called “The Trade,” that a brass
+coal-scuttle, a roasting-jack, and a birdcage, were obliged to be put
+into it to make a Lot of it, and then it went for a song.  So I heard
+mentioned, and I wondered what song, and thought what a dismal song it
+must have been to sing!
+
+Then, I was sent to a great, cold, bare, school of big boys; where
+everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy, without being enough;
+where everybody, large and small, was cruel; where the boys knew all
+about the sale, before I got there, and asked me what I had fetched, and
+who had bought me, and hooted at me, “Going, going, gone!”  I never
+whispered in that wretched place that I had been Haroun, or had had a
+Seraglio: for, I knew that if I mentioned my reverses, I should be so
+worried, that I should have to drown myself in the muddy pond near the
+playground, which looked like the beer.
+
+Ah me, ah me!  No other ghost has haunted the boy’s room, my friends,
+since I have occupied it, than the ghost of my own childhood, the ghost
+of my own innocence, the ghost of my own airy belief.  Many a time have I
+pursued the phantom: never with this man’s stride of mine to come up with
+it, never with these man’s hands of mine to touch it, never more to this
+man’s heart of mine to hold it in its purity.  And here you see me
+working out, as cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of shaving in
+the glass a constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up
+with the skeleton allotted to me for my mortal companion.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRIAL FOR MURDER. {303}
+
+
+I HAVE always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of
+superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their own
+psychological experiences when those have been of a strange sort.  Almost
+all men are afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no
+parallel or response in a listener’s internal life, and might be
+suspected or laughed at.  A truthful traveller, who should have seen some
+extraordinary creature in the likeness of a sea-serpent, would have no
+fear of mentioning it; but the same traveller, having had some singular
+presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought, vision (so-called), dream, or
+other remarkable mental impression, would hesitate considerably before he
+would own to it.  To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in
+which such subjects are involved.  We do not habitually communicate our
+experiences of these subjective things as we do our experiences of
+objective creation.  The consequence is, that the general stock of
+experience in this regard appears exceptional, and really is so, in
+respect of being miserably imperfect.
+
+In what I am going to relate, I have no intention of setting up,
+opposing, or supporting, any theory whatever.  I know the history of the
+Bookseller of Berlin, I have studied the case of the wife of a late
+Astronomer Royal as related by Sir David Brewster, and I have followed
+the minutest details of a much more remarkable case of Spectral Illusion
+occurring within my private circle of friends.  It may be necessary to
+state as to this last, that the sufferer (a lady) was in no degree,
+however distant, related to me.  A mistaken assumption on that head might
+suggest an explanation of a part of my own case,—but only a part,—which
+would be wholly without foundation.  It cannot be referred to my
+inheritance of any developed peculiarity, nor had I ever before any at
+all similar experience, nor have I ever had any at all similar experience
+since.
+
+It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, a certain murder was
+committed in England, which attracted great attention.  We hear more than
+enough of murderers as they rise in succession to their atrocious
+eminence, and I would bury the memory of this particular brute, if I
+could, as his body was buried, in Newgate Jail.  I purposely abstain from
+giving any direct clue to the criminal’s individuality.
+
+When the murder was first discovered, no suspicion fell—or I ought rather
+to say, for I cannot be too precise in my facts, it was nowhere publicly
+hinted that any suspicion fell—on the man who was afterwards brought to
+trial.  As no reference was at that time made to him in the newspapers,
+it is obviously impossible that any description of him can at that time
+have been given in the newspapers.  It is essential that this fact be
+remembered.
+
+Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing the account of that
+first discovery, I found it to be deeply interesting, and I read it with
+close attention.  I read it twice, if not three times.  The discovery had
+been made in a bedroom, and, when I laid down the paper, I was aware of a
+flash—rush—flow—I do not know what to call it,—no word I can find is
+satisfactorily descriptive,—in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing
+through my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running river.
+Though almost instantaneous in its passing, it was perfectly clear; so
+clear that I distinctly, and with a sense of relief, observed the absence
+of the dead body from the bed.
+
+It was in no romantic place that I had this curious sensation, but in
+chambers in Piccadilly, very near to the corner of St. James’s Street.
+It was entirely new to me.  I was in my easy-chair at the moment, and the
+sensation was accompanied with a peculiar shiver which started the chair
+from its position.  (But it is to be noted that the chair ran easily on
+castors.)  I went to one of the windows (there are two in the room, and
+the room is on the second floor) to refresh my eyes with the moving
+objects down in Piccadilly.  It was a bright autumn morning, and the
+street was sparkling and cheerful.  The wind was high.  As I looked out,
+it brought down from the Park a quantity of fallen leaves, which a gust
+took, and whirled into a spiral pillar.  As the pillar fell and the
+leaves dispersed, I saw two men on the opposite side of the way, going
+from West to East.  They were one behind the other.  The foremost man
+often looked back over his shoulder.  The second man followed him, at a
+distance of some thirty paces, with his right hand menacingly raised.
+First, the singularity and steadiness of this threatening gesture in so
+public a thoroughfare attracted my attention; and next, the more
+remarkable circumstance that nobody heeded it.  Both men threaded their
+way among the other passengers with a smoothness hardly consistent even
+with the action of walking on a pavement; and no single creature, that I
+could see, gave them place, touched them, or looked after them.  In
+passing before my windows, they both stared up at me.  I saw their two
+faces very distinctly, and I knew that I could recognise them anywhere.
+Not that I had consciously noticed anything very remarkable in either
+face, except that the man who went first had an unusually lowering
+appearance, and that the face of the man who followed him was of the
+colour of impure wax.
+
+I am a bachelor, and my valet and his wife constitute my whole
+establishment.  My occupation is in a certain Branch Bank, and I wish
+that my duties as head of a Department were as light as they are
+popularly supposed to be.  They kept me in town that autumn, when I stood
+in need of change.  I was not ill, but I was not well.  My reader is to
+make the most that can be reasonably made of my feeling jaded, having a
+depressing sense upon me of a monotonous life, and being “slightly
+dyspeptic.”  I am assured by my renowned doctor that my real state of
+health at that time justifies no stronger description, and I quote his
+own from his written answer to my request for it.
+
+As the circumstances of the murder, gradually unravelling, took stronger
+and stronger possession of the public mind, I kept them away from mine by
+knowing as little about them as was possible in the midst of the
+universal excitement.  But I knew that a verdict of Wilful Murder had
+been found against the suspected murderer, and that he had been committed
+to Newgate for trial.  I also knew that his trial had been postponed over
+one Sessions of the Central Criminal Court, on the ground of general
+prejudice and want of time for the preparation of the defence.  I may
+further have known, but I believe I did not, when, or about when, the
+Sessions to which his trial stood postponed would come on.
+
+My sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room, are all on one floor.  With
+the last there is no communication but through the bedroom.  True, there
+is a door in it, once communicating with the staircase; but a part of the
+fitting of my bath has been—and had then been for some years—fixed across
+it.  At the same period, and as a part of the same arrangement,—the door
+had been nailed up and canvased over.
+
+I was standing in my bedroom late one night, giving some directions to my
+servant before he went to bed.  My face was towards the only available
+door of communication with the dressing-room, and it was closed.  My
+servant’s back was towards that door.  While I was speaking to him, I saw
+it open, and a man look in, who very earnestly and mysteriously beckoned
+to me.  That man was the man who had gone second of the two along
+Piccadilly, and whose face was of the colour of impure wax.
+
+The figure, having beckoned, drew back, and closed the door.  With no
+longer pause than was made by my crossing the bedroom, I opened the
+dressing-room door, and looked in.  I had a lighted candle already in my
+hand.  I felt no inward expectation of seeing the figure in the
+dressing-room, and I did not see it there.
+
+Conscious that my servant stood amazed, I turned round to him, and said:
+“Derrick, could you believe that in my cool senses I fancied I saw a —”
+As I there laid my hand upon his breast, with a sudden start he trembled
+violently, and said, “O Lord, yes, sir!  A dead man beckoning!”
+
+Now I do not believe that this John Derrick, my trusty and attached
+servant for more than twenty years, had any impression whatever of having
+seen any such figure, until I touched him.  The change in him was so
+startling, when I touched him, that I fully believe he derived his
+impression in some occult manner from me at that instant.
+
+I bade John Derrick bring some brandy, and I gave him a dram, and was
+glad to take one myself.  Of what had preceded that night’s phenomenon, I
+told him not a single word.  Reflecting on it, I was absolutely certain
+that I had never seen that face before, except on the one occasion in
+Piccadilly.  Comparing its expression when beckoning at the door with its
+expression when it had stared up at me as I stood at my window, I came to
+the conclusion that on the first occasion it had sought to fasten itself
+upon my memory, and that on the second occasion it had made sure of being
+immediately remembered.
+
+I was not very comfortable that night, though I felt a certainty,
+difficult to explain, that the figure would not return.  At daylight I
+fell into a heavy sleep, from which I was awakened by John Derrick’s
+coming to my bedside with a paper in his hand.
+
+This paper, it appeared, had been the subject of an altercation at the
+door between its bearer and my servant.  It was a summons to me to serve
+upon a Jury at the forthcoming Sessions of the Central Criminal Court at
+the Old Bailey.  I had never before been summoned on such a Jury, as John
+Derrick well knew.  He believed—I am not certain at this hour whether
+with reason or otherwise—that that class of Jurors were customarily
+chosen on a lower qualification than mine, and he had at first refused to
+accept the summons.  The man who served it had taken the matter very
+coolly.  He had said that my attendance or non-attendance was nothing to
+him; there the summons was; and I should deal with it at my own peril,
+and not at his.
+
+For a day or two I was undecided whether to respond to this call, or take
+no notice of it.  I was not conscious of the slightest mysterious bias,
+influence, or attraction, one way or other.  Of that I am as strictly
+sure as of every other statement that I make here.  Ultimately I decided,
+as a break in the monotony of my life, that I would go.
+
+The appointed morning was a raw morning in the month of November.  There
+was a dense brown fog in Piccadilly, and it became positively black and
+in the last degree oppressive East of Temple Bar.  I found the passages
+and staircases of the Court-House flaringly lighted with gas, and the
+Court itself similarly illuminated.  I _think_ that, until I was
+conducted by officers into the Old Court and saw its crowded state, I did
+not know that the Murderer was to be tried that day.  I _think_ that,
+until I was so helped into the Old Court with considerable difficulty, I
+did not know into which of the two Courts sitting my summons would take
+me.  But this must not be received as a positive assertion, for I am not
+completely satisfied in my mind on either point.
+
+I took my seat in the place appropriated to Jurors in waiting, and I
+looked about the Court as well as I could through the cloud of fog and
+breath that was heavy in it.  I noticed the black vapour hanging like a
+murky curtain outside the great windows, and I noticed the stifled sound
+of wheels on the straw or tan that was littered in the street; also, the
+hum of the people gathered there, which a shrill whistle, or a louder
+song or hail than the rest, occasionally pierced.  Soon afterwards the
+Judges, two in number, entered, and took their seats.  The buzz in the
+Court was awfully hushed.  The direction was given to put the Murderer to
+the bar.  He appeared there.  And in that same instant I recognised in
+him the first of the two men who had gone down Piccadilly.
+
+If my name had been called then, I doubt if I could have answered to it
+audibly.  But it was called about sixth or eighth in the panel, and I was
+by that time able to say, “Here!”  Now, observe.  As I stepped into the
+box, the prisoner, who had been looking on attentively, but with no sign
+of concern, became violently agitated, and beckoned to his attorney.  The
+prisoner’s wish to challenge me was so manifest, that it occasioned a
+pause, during which the attorney, with his hand upon the dock, whispered
+with his client, and shook his head.  I afterwards had it from that
+gentleman, that the prisoner’s first affrighted words to him were, “_At
+all hazards_, _challenge that man_!”  But that, as he would give no
+reason for it, and admitted that he had not even known my name until he
+heard it called and I appeared, it was not done.
+
+Both on the ground already explained, that I wish to avoid reviving the
+unwholesome memory of that Murderer, and also because a detailed account
+of his long trial is by no means indispensable to my narrative, I shall
+confine myself closely to such incidents in the ten days and nights
+during which we, the Jury, were kept together, as directly bear on my own
+curious personal experience.  It is in that, and not in the Murderer,
+that I seek to interest my reader.  It is to that, and not to a page of
+the Newgate Calendar, that I beg attention.
+
+I was chosen Foreman of the Jury.  On the second morning of the trial,
+after evidence had been taken for two hours (I heard the church clocks
+strike), happening to cast my eyes over my brother jurymen, I found an
+inexplicable difficulty in counting them.  I counted them several times,
+yet always with the same difficulty.  In short, I made them one too many.
+
+I touched the brother jurymen whose place was next me, and I whispered to
+him, “Oblige me by counting us.”  He looked surprised by the request, but
+turned his head and counted. “Why,” says he, suddenly, “we are Thirt—;
+but no, it’s not possible.  No.  We are twelve.”
+
+According to my counting that day, we were always right in detail, but in
+the gross we were always one too many.  There was no appearance—no
+figure—to account for it; but I had now an inward foreshadowing of the
+figure that was surely coming.
+
+The Jury were housed at the London Tavern.  We all slept in one large
+room on separate tables, and we were constantly in the charge and under
+the eye of the officer sworn to hold us in safe-keeping.  I see no reason
+for suppressing the real name of that officer.  He was intelligent,
+highly polite, and obliging, and (I was glad to hear) much respected in
+the City.  He had an agreeable presence, good eyes, enviable black
+whiskers, and a fine sonorous voice.  His name was Mr. Harker.
+
+When we turned into our twelve beds at night, Mr. Harker’s bed was drawn
+across the door.  On the night of the second day, not being disposed to
+lie down, and seeing Mr. Harker sitting on his bed, I went and sat beside
+him, and offered him a pinch of snuff.  As Mr. Harker’s hand touched mine
+in taking it from my box, a peculiar shiver crossed him, and he said,
+“Who is this?”
+
+Following Mr. Harker’s eyes, and looking along the room, I saw again the
+figure I expected,—the second of the two men who had gone down
+Piccadilly.  I rose, and advanced a few steps; then stopped, and looked
+round at Mr. Harker.  He was quite unconcerned, laughed, and said in a
+pleasant way, “I thought for a moment we had a thirteenth juryman,
+without a bed.  But I see it is the moonlight.”
+
+Making no revelation to Mr. Harker, but inviting him to take a walk with
+me to the end of the room, I watched what the figure did.  It stood for a
+few moments by the bedside of each of my eleven brother jurymen, close to
+the pillow.  It always went to the right-hand side of the bed, and always
+passed out crossing the foot of the next bed.  It seemed, from the action
+of the head, merely to look down pensively at each recumbent figure.  It
+took no notice of me, or of my bed, which was that nearest to Mr.
+Harker’s.  It seemed to go out where the moonlight came in, through a
+high window, as by an aërial flight of stairs.
+
+Next morning at breakfast, it appeared that everybody present had dreamed
+of the murdered man last night, except myself and Mr. Harker.
+
+I now felt as convinced that the second man who had gone down Piccadilly
+was the murdered man (so to speak), as if it had been borne into my
+comprehension by his immediate testimony.  But even this took place, and
+in a manner for which I was not at all prepared.
+
+On the fifth day of the trial, when the case for the prosecution was
+drawing to a close, a miniature of the murdered man, missing from his
+bedroom upon the discovery of the deed, and afterwards found in a
+hiding-place where the Murderer had been seen digging, was put in
+evidence.  Having been identified by the witness under examination, it
+was handed up to the Bench, and thence handed down to be inspected by the
+Jury.  As an officer in a black gown was making his way with it across to
+me, the figure of the second man who had gone down Piccadilly impetuously
+started from the crowd, caught the miniature from the officer, and gave
+it to me with his own hands, at the same time saying, in a low and hollow
+tone,—before I saw the miniature, which was in a locket,—“_I was younger
+then_, _and my face was not then drained of blood_.”  It also came
+between me and the brother juryman to whom I would have given the
+miniature, and between him and the brother juryman to whom he would have
+given it, and so passed it on through the whole of our number, and back
+into my possession.  Not one of them, however, detected this.
+
+At table, and generally when we were shut up together in Mr. Harker’s
+custody, we had from the first naturally discussed the day’s proceedings
+a good deal.  On that fifth day, the case for the prosecution being
+closed, and we having that side of the question in a completed shape
+before us, our discussion was more animated and serious.  Among our
+number was a vestryman,—the densest idiot I have ever seen at large,—who
+met the plainest evidence with the most preposterous objections, and who
+was sided with by two flabby parochial parasites; all the three
+impanelled from a district so delivered over to Fever that they ought to
+have been upon their own trial for five hundred Murders.  When these
+mischievous blockheads were at their loudest, which was towards midnight,
+while some of us were already preparing for bed, I again saw the murdered
+man.  He stood grimly behind them, beckoning to me.  On my going towards
+them, and striking into the conversation, he immediately retired.  This
+was the beginning of a separate series of appearances, confined to that
+long room in which we were confined.  Whenever a knot of my brother
+jurymen laid their heads together, I saw the head of the murdered man
+among theirs.  Whenever their comparison of notes was going against him,
+he would solemnly and irresistibly beckon to me.
+
+It will be borne in mind that down to the production of the miniature, on
+the fifth day of the trial, I had never seen the Appearance in Court.
+Three changes occurred now that we entered on the case for the defence.
+Two of them I will mention together, first.  The figure was now in Court
+continually, and it never there addressed itself to me, but always to the
+person who was speaking at the time.  For instance: the throat of the
+murdered man had been cut straight across.  In the opening speech for the
+defence, it was suggested that the deceased might have cut his own
+throat.  At that very moment, the figure, with its throat in the dreadful
+condition referred to (this it had concealed before), stood at the
+speaker’s elbow, motioning across and across its windpipe, now with the
+right hand, now with the left, vigorously suggesting to the speaker
+himself the impossibility of such a wound having been self-inflicted by
+either hand.  For another instance: a witness to character, a woman,
+deposed to the prisoner’s being the most amiable of mankind.  The figure
+at that instant stood on the floor before her, looking her full in the
+face, and pointing out the prisoner’s evil countenance with an extended
+arm and an outstretched finger.
+
+The third change now to be added impressed me strongly as the most marked
+and striking of all.  I do not theorise upon it; I accurately state it,
+and there leave it.  Although the Appearance was not itself perceived by
+those whom it addressed, its coming close to such persons was invariably
+attended by some trepidation or disturbance on their part.  It seemed to
+me as if it were prevented, by laws to which I was not amenable, from
+fully revealing itself to others, and yet as if it could invisibly,
+dumbly, and darkly overshadow their minds.  When the leading counsel for
+the defence suggested that hypothesis of suicide, and the figure stood at
+the learned gentleman’s elbow, frightfully sawing at its severed throat,
+it is undeniable that the counsel faltered in his speech, lost for a few
+seconds the thread of his ingenious discourse, wiped his forehead with
+his handkerchief, and turned extremely pale.  When the witness to
+character was confronted by the Appearance, her eyes most certainly did
+follow the direction of its pointed finger, and rest in great hesitation
+and trouble upon the prisoner’s face.  Two additional illustrations will
+suffice.  On the eighth day of the trial, after the pause which was every
+day made early in the afternoon for a few minutes’ rest and refreshment,
+I came back into Court with the rest of the Jury some little time before
+the return of the Judges.  Standing up in the box and looking about me, I
+thought the figure was not there, until, chancing to raise my eyes to the
+gallery, I saw it bending forward, and leaning over a very decent woman,
+as if to assure itself whether the Judges had resumed their seats or not.
+Immediately afterwards that woman screamed, fainted, and was carried out.
+So with the venerable, sagacious, and patient Judge who conducted the
+trial.  When the case was over, and he settled himself and his papers to
+sum up, the murdered man, entering by the Judges’ door, advanced to his
+Lordship’s desk, and looked eagerly over his shoulder at the pages of his
+notes which he was turning.  A change came over his Lordship’s face; his
+hand stopped; the peculiar shiver, that I knew so well, passed over him;
+he faltered, “Excuse me, gentlemen, for a few moments.  I am somewhat
+oppressed by the vitiated air;” and did not recover until he had drunk a
+glass of water.
+
+Through all the monotony of six of those interminable ten days,—the same
+Judges and others on the bench, the same Murderer in the dock, the same
+lawyers at the table, the same tones of question and answer rising to the
+roof of the court, the same scratching of the Judge’s pen, the same
+ushers going in and out, the same lights kindled at the same hour when
+there had been any natural light of day, the same foggy curtain outside
+the great windows when it was foggy, the same rain pattering and dripping
+when it was rainy, the same footmarks of turnkeys and prisoner day after
+day on the same sawdust, the same keys locking and unlocking the same
+heavy doors,—through all the wearisome monotony which made me feel as if
+I had been Foreman of the Jury for a vast period of time, and Piccadilly
+had flourished coevally with Babylon, the murdered man never lost one
+trace of his distinctness in my eyes, nor was he at any moment less
+distinct than anybody else.  I must not omit, as a matter of fact, that I
+never once saw the Appearance which I call by the name of the murdered
+man look at the Murderer.  Again and again I wondered, “Why does he not?”
+But he never did.
+
+Nor did he look at me, after the production of the miniature, until the
+last closing minutes of the trial arrived.  We retired to consider, at
+seven minutes before ten at night.  The idiotic vestryman and his two
+parochial parasites gave us so much trouble that we twice returned into
+Court to beg to have certain extracts from the Judge’s notes re-read.
+Nine of us had not the smallest doubt about those passages, neither, I
+believe, had any one in the Court; the dunder-headed triumvirate, having
+no idea but obstruction, disputed them for that very reason.  At length
+we prevailed, and finally the Jury returned into Court at ten minutes
+past twelve.
+
+The murdered man at that time stood directly opposite the Jury-box, on
+the other side of the Court.  As I took my place, his eyes rested on me
+with great attention; he seemed satisfied, and slowly shook a great gray
+veil, which he carried on his arm for the first time, over his head and
+whole form.  As I gave in our verdict, “Guilty,” the veil collapsed, all
+was gone, and his place was empty.
+
+The Murderer, being asked by the Judge, according to usage, whether he
+had anything to say before sentence of Death should be passed upon him,
+indistinctly muttered something which was described in the leading
+newspapers of the following day as “a few rambling, incoherent, and
+half-audible words, in which he was understood to complain that he had
+not had a fair trial, because the Foreman of the Jury was prepossessed
+against him.”  The remarkable declaration that he really made was this:
+“_My Lord_, _I knew I was a doomed man_, _when the Foreman of my Jury
+came into the box_.  _My Lord_, _I knew he would never let me off_,
+_because_, _before I was taken_, _he somehow got to my bedside in the
+night_, _woke me_, _and put a rope round my neck_.”
+
+
+
+
+THE SIGNAL-MAN. {312}
+
+
+“HALLOA!  Below there!”
+
+When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of
+his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole.  One would
+have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not
+have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but instead of looking up
+to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he
+turned himself about, and looked down the Line.  There was something
+remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not have said for my
+life what.  But I know it was remarkable enough to attract my notice,
+even though his figure was foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep
+trench, and mine was high above him, so steeped in the glow of an angry
+sunset, that I had shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all.
+
+“Halloa!  Below!”
+
+From looking down the Line, he turned himself about again, and, raising
+his eyes, saw my figure high above him.
+
+“Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you?”
+
+He looked up at me without replying, and I looked down at him without
+pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle question.  Just then
+there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into
+a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me to start back,
+as though it had force to draw me down.  When such vapour as rose to my
+height from this rapid train had passed me, and was skimming away over
+the landscape, I looked down again, and saw him refurling the flag he had
+shown while the train went by.
+
+I repeated my inquiry.  After a pause, during which he seemed to regard
+me with fixed attention, he motioned with his rolled-up flag towards a
+point on my level, some two or three hundred yards distant.  I called
+down to him, “All right!” and made for that point.  There, by dint of
+looking closely about me, I found a rough zigzag descending path notched
+out, which I followed.
+
+The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitate.  It was made
+through a clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter as I went down.
+For these reasons, I found the way long enough to give me time to recall
+a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he had pointed out
+the path.
+
+When I came down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him again, I
+saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by which the train
+had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting for me to appear.
+He had his left hand at his chin, and that left elbow rested on his right
+hand, crossed over his breast.  His attitude was one of such expectation
+and watchfulness that I stopped a moment, wondering at it.
+
+I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon the level of the
+railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark, sallow man,
+with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows.  His post was in as solitary
+and dismal a place as ever I saw.  On either side, a dripping-wet wall of
+jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one
+way only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter
+perspective in the other direction terminating in a gloomy red light, and
+the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive architecture
+there was a barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air.  So little
+sunlight ever found its way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly
+smell; and so much cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to
+me, as if I had left the natural world.
+
+Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have touched him.  Not
+even then removing his eyes from mine, he stepped back one step, and
+lifted his hand.
+
+This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my
+attention when I looked down from up yonder.  A visitor was a rarity, I
+should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity, I hoped?  In me, he merely saw a
+man who had been shut up within narrow limits all his life, and who,
+being at last set free, had a newly-awakened interest in these great
+works.  To such purpose I spoke to him; but I am far from sure of the
+terms I used; for, besides that I am not happy in opening any
+conversation, there was something in the man that daunted me.
+
+He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the tunnel’s
+mouth, and looked all about it, as if something were missing from it, and
+then looked at me.
+
+That light was part of his charge?  Was it not?
+
+He answered in a low voice,—“Don’t you know it is?”
+
+The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I perused the fixed eyes and
+the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man.  I have speculated
+since, whether there may have been infection in his mind.
+
+In my turn, I stepped back.  But in making the action, I detected in his
+eyes some latent fear of me.  This put the monstrous thought to flight.
+
+“You look at me,” I said, forcing a smile, “as if you had a dread of me.”
+
+“I was doubtful,” he returned, “whether I had seen you before.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+He pointed to the red light he had looked at.
+
+“There?” I said.
+
+Intently watchful of me, he replied (but without sound), “Yes.”
+
+“My good fellow, what should I do there?  However, be that as it may, I
+never was there, you may swear.”
+
+“I think I may,” he rejoined.  “Yes; I am sure I may.”
+
+His manner cleared, like my own.  He replied to my remarks with
+readiness, and in well-chosen words.  Had he much to do there?  Yes; that
+was to say, he had enough responsibility to bear; but exactness and
+watchfulness were what was required of him, and of actual work—manual
+labour—he had next to none.  To change that signal, to trim those lights,
+and to turn this iron handle now and then, was all he had to do under
+that head.  Regarding those many long and lonely hours of which I seemed
+to make so much, he could only say that the routine of his life had
+shaped itself into that form, and he had grown used to it.  He had taught
+himself a language down here,—if only to know it by sight, and to have
+formed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation, could be called learning
+it.  He had also worked at fractions and decimals, and tried a little
+algebra; but he was, and had been as a boy, a poor hand at figures.  Was
+it necessary for him when on duty always to remain in that channel of
+damp air, and could he never rise into the sunshine from between those
+high stone walls?  Why, that depended upon times and circumstances.
+Under some conditions there would be less upon the Line than under
+others, and the same held good as to certain hours of the day and night.
+In bright weather, he did choose occasions for getting a little above
+these lower shadows; but, being at all times liable to be called by his
+electric bell, and at such times listening for it with redoubled anxiety,
+the relief was less than I would suppose.
+
+He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an official
+book in which he had to make certain entries, a telegraphic instrument
+with its dial, face, and needles, and the little bell of which he had
+spoken.  On my trusting that he would excuse the remark that he had been
+well educated, and (I hoped I might say without offence) perhaps educated
+above that station, he observed that instances of slight incongruity in
+such wise would rarely be found wanting among large bodies of men; that
+he had heard it was so in workhouses, in the police force, even in that
+last desperate resource, the army; and that he knew it was so, more or
+less, in any great railway staff.  He had been, when young (if I could
+believe it, sitting in that hut,—he scarcely could), a student of natural
+philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, misused his
+opportunities, gone down, and never risen again.  He had no complaint to
+offer about that.  He had made his bed, and he lay upon it.  It was far
+too late to make another.
+
+                        [Picture: The signal-man]
+
+All that I have here condensed he said in a quiet manner, with his grave,
+dark regards divided between me and the fire.  He threw in the word,
+“Sir,” from time to time, and especially when he referred to his
+youth,—as though to request me to understand that he claimed to be
+nothing but what I found him.  He was several times interrupted by the
+little bell, and had to read off messages, and send replies.  Once he had
+to stand without the door, and display a flag as a train passed, and make
+some verbal communication to the driver.  In the discharge of his duties,
+I observed him to be remarkably exact and vigilant, breaking off his
+discourse at a syllable, and remaining silent until what he had to do was
+done.
+
+In a word, I should have set this man down as one of the safest of men to
+be employed in that capacity, but for the circumstance that while he was
+speaking to me he twice broke off with a fallen colour, turned his face
+towards the little bell when it did NOT ring, opened the door of the hut
+(which was kept shut to exclude the unhealthy damp), and looked out
+towards the red light near the mouth of the tunnel.  On both of those
+occasions, he came back to the fire with the inexplicable air upon him
+which I had remarked, without being able to define, when we were so far
+asunder.
+
+Said I, when I rose to leave him, “You almost make me think that I have
+met with a contented man.”
+
+(I am afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead him on.)
+
+“I believe I used to be so,” he rejoined, in the low voice in which he
+had first spoken; “but I am troubled, sir, I am troubled.”
+
+He would have recalled the words if he could.  He had said them, however,
+and I took them up quickly.
+
+“With what?  What is your trouble?”
+
+“It is very difficult to impart, sir.  It is very, very difficult to
+speak of.  If ever you make me another visit, I will try to tell you.”
+
+“But I expressly intend to make you another visit.  Say, when shall it
+be?”
+
+“I go off early in the morning, and I shall be on again at ten to-morrow
+night, sir.”
+
+“I will come at eleven.”
+
+He thanked me, and went out at the door with me.  “I’ll show my white
+light, sir,” he said, in his peculiar low voice, “till you have found the
+way up.  When you have found it, don’t call out!  And when you are at the
+top, don’t call out!”
+
+His manner seemed to make the place strike colder to me, but I said no
+more than, “Very well.”
+
+“And when you come down to-morrow night, don’t call out!  Let me ask you
+a parting question.  What made you cry, ‘Halloa!  Below there!’
+to-night?”
+
+“Heaven knows,” said I.  “I cried something to that effect—”
+
+“Not to that effect, sir.  Those were the very words.  I know them well.”
+
+“Admit those were the very words.  I said them, no doubt, because I saw
+you below.”
+
+“For no other reason?”
+
+“What other reason could I possibly have?”
+
+“You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you in any supernatural
+way?”
+
+“No.”
+
+He wished me good-night, and held up his light.  I walked by the side of
+the down Line of rails (with a very disagreeable sensation of a train
+coming behind me) until I found the path.  It was easier to mount than to
+descend, and I got back to my inn without any adventure.
+
+Punctual to my appointment, I placed my foot on the first notch of the
+zigzag next night, as the distant clocks were striking eleven.  He was
+waiting for me at the bottom, with his white light on.  “I have not
+called out,” I said, when we came close together; “may I speak now?”  “By
+all means, sir.”  “Good-night, then, and here’s my hand.”  “Good-night,
+sir, and here’s mine.”  With that we walked side by side to his box,
+entered it, closed the door, and sat down by the fire.
+
+“I have made up my mind, sir,” he began, bending forward as soon as we
+were seated, and speaking in a tone but a little above a whisper, “that
+you shall not have to ask me twice what troubles me.  I took you for some
+one else yesterday evening.  That troubles me.”
+
+“That mistake?”
+
+“No.  That some one else.”
+
+“Who is it?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+“Like me?”
+
+“I don’t know.  I never saw the face.  The left arm is across the face,
+and the right arm is waved,—violently waved.  This way.”
+
+I followed his action with my eyes, and it was the action of an arm
+gesticulating, with the utmost passion and vehemence, “For God’s sake,
+clear the way!”
+
+“One moonlight night,” said the man, “I was sitting here, when I heard a
+voice cry, ‘Halloa!  Below there!’  I started up, looked from that door,
+and saw this Some one else standing by the red light near the tunnel,
+waving as I just now showed you.  The voice seemed hoarse with shouting,
+and it cried, ‘Look out!  Look out!’  And then again, ‘Halloa!  Below
+there!  Look out!’  I caught up my lamp, turned it on red, and ran
+towards the figure, calling, ‘What’s wrong?  What has happened?  Where?’
+It stood just outside the blackness of the tunnel.  I advanced so close
+upon it that I wondered at its keeping the sleeve across its eyes.  I ran
+right up at it, and had my hand stretched out to pull the sleeve away,
+when it was gone.”
+
+“Into the tunnel?” said I.
+
+“No.  I ran on into the tunnel, five hundred yards.  I stopped, and held
+my lamp above my head, and saw the figures of the measured distance, and
+saw the wet stains stealing down the walls and trickling through the
+arch.  I ran out again faster than I had run in (for I had a mortal
+abhorrence of the place upon me), and I looked all round the red light
+with my own red light, and I went up the iron ladder to the gallery atop
+of it, and I came down again, and ran back here.  I telegraphed both
+ways, ‘An alarm has been given.  Is anything wrong?’  The answer came
+back, both ways, ‘All well.’”
+
+Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine, I
+showed him how that this figure must be a deception of his sense of
+sight; and how that figures, originating in disease of the delicate
+nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have
+often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the nature
+of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments upon
+themselves.  “As to an imaginary cry,” said I, “do but listen for a
+moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so low, and to
+the wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires.”
+
+That was all very well, he returned, after we had sat listening for a
+while, and he ought to know something of the wind and the wires,—he who
+so often passed long winter nights there, alone and watching.  But he
+would beg to remark that he had not finished.
+
+I asked his pardon, and he slowly added these words, touching my arm,—
+
+“Within six hours after the Appearance, the memorable accident on this
+Line happened, and within ten hours the dead and wounded were brought
+along through the tunnel over the spot where the figure had stood.”
+
+A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my best against it.  It
+was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable coincidence,
+calculated deeply to impress his mind.  But it was unquestionable that
+remarkable coincidences did continually occur, and they must be taken
+into account in dealing with such a subject.  Though to be sure I must
+admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he was going to bring the
+objection to bear upon me), men of common sense did not allow much for
+coincidences in making the ordinary calculations of life.
+
+He again begged to remark that he had not finished.
+
+I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into interruptions.
+
+“This,” he said, again laying his hand upon my arm, and glancing over his
+shoulder with hollow eyes, “was just a year ago.  Six or seven months
+passed, and I had recovered from the surprise and shock, when one
+morning, as the day was breaking, I, standing at the door, looked towards
+the red light, and saw the spectre again.”  He stopped, with a fixed look
+at me.
+
+“Did it cry out?”
+
+“No.  It was silent.”
+
+“Did it wave its arm?”
+
+“No.  It leaned against the shaft of the light, with both hands before
+the face.  Like this.”
+
+Once more I followed his action with my eyes.  It was an action of
+mourning.  I have seen such an attitude in stone figures on tombs.
+
+“Did you go up to it?”
+
+“I came in and sat down, partly to collect my thoughts, partly because it
+had turned me faint.  When I went to the door again, daylight was above
+me, and the ghost was gone.”
+
+“But nothing followed?  Nothing came of this?”
+
+He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice giving a
+ghastly nod each time:—
+
+“That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I noticed, at a
+carriage window on my side, what looked like a confusion of hands and
+heads, and something waved.  I saw it just in time to signal the driver,
+Stop!  He shut off, and put his brake on, but the train drifted past here
+a hundred and fifty yards or more.  I ran after it, and, as I went along,
+heard terrible screams and cries.  A beautiful young lady had died
+instantaneously in one of the compartments, and was brought in here, and
+laid down on this floor between us.”
+
+Involuntarily I pushed my chair back, as I looked from the boards at
+which he pointed to himself.
+
+“True, sir.  True.  Precisely as it happened, so I tell it you.”
+
+I could think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was very
+dry.  The wind and the wires took up the story with a long lamenting
+wail.
+
+He resumed.  “Now, sir, mark this, and judge how my mind is troubled.
+The spectre came back a week ago.  Ever since, it has been there, now and
+again, by fits and starts.”
+
+“At the light?”
+
+“At the Danger-light.”
+
+“What does it seem to do?”
+
+He repeated, if possible with increased passion and vehemence, that
+former gesticulation of, “For God’s sake, clear the way!”
+
+Then he went on.  “I have no peace or rest for it.  It calls to me, for
+many minutes together, in an agonised manner, ‘Below there!  Look out!
+Look out!’  It stands waving to me.  It rings my little bell—”
+
+I caught at that.  “Did it ring your bell yesterday evening when I was
+here, and you went to the door?”
+
+“Twice.”
+
+“Why, see,” said I, “how your imagination misleads you.  My eyes were on
+the bell, and my ears were open to the bell, and if I am a living man, it
+did NOT ring at those times.  No, nor at any other time, except when it
+was rung in the natural course of physical things by the station
+communicating with you.”
+
+He shook his head. “I have never made a mistake as to that yet, sir.  I
+have never confused the spectre’s ring with the man’s.  The ghost’s ring
+is a strange vibration in the bell that it derives from nothing else, and
+I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eye.  I don’t wonder that
+you failed to hear it.  But _I_ heard it.”
+
+“And did the spectre seem to be there, when you looked out?”
+
+“It WAS there.”
+
+“Both times?”
+
+He repeated firmly: “Both times.”
+
+“Will you come to the door with me, and look for it now?”
+
+He bit his under lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but arose.  I
+opened the door, and stood on the step, while he stood in the doorway.
+There was the Danger-light.  There was the dismal mouth of the tunnel.
+There were the high, wet stone walls of the cutting.  There were the
+stars above them.
+
+“Do you see it?” I asked him, taking particular note of his face.  His
+eyes were prominent and strained, but not very much more so, perhaps,
+than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly towards the same
+spot.
+
+“No,” he answered.  “It is not there.”
+
+“Agreed,” said I.
+
+We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats.  I was thinking
+how best to improve this advantage, if it might be called one, when he
+took up the conversation in such a matter-of-course way, so assuming that
+there could be no serious question of fact between us, that I felt myself
+placed in the weakest of positions.
+
+“By this time you will fully understand, sir,” he said, “that what
+troubles me so dreadfully is the question, What does the spectre mean?”
+
+I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand.
+
+“What is its warning against?” he said, ruminating, with his eyes on the
+fire, and only by times turning them on me.  “What is the danger?  Where
+is the danger?  There is danger overhanging somewhere on the Line.  Some
+dreadful calamity will happen.  It is not to be doubted this third time,
+after what has gone before.  But surely this is a cruel haunting of me.
+What can I do?”
+
+He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated
+forehead.
+
+“If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on both, I can give no
+reason for it,” he went on, wiping the palms of his hands.  “I should get
+into trouble, and do no good.  They would think I was mad.  This is the
+way it would work,—Message: ‘Danger!  Take care!’  Answer: ‘What Danger?
+Where?’  Message: ‘Don’t know.  But, for God’s sake, take care!’  They
+would displace me.  What else could they do?”
+
+His pain of mind was most pitiable to see.  It was the mental torture of
+a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible
+responsibility involving life.
+
+“When it first stood under the Danger-light,” he went on, putting his
+dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward across and
+across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, “why not tell me
+where that accident was to happen,—if it must happen?  Why not tell me
+how it could be averted,—if it could have been averted?  When on its
+second coming it hid its face, why not tell me, instead, ‘She is going to
+die.  Let them keep her at home’?  If it came, on those two occasions,
+only to show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the
+third, why not warn me plainly now?  And I, Lord help me!  A mere poor
+signal-man on this solitary station!  Why not go to somebody with credit
+to be believed, and power to act?”
+
+When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man’s sake, as well
+as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to compose
+his mind.  Therefore, setting aside all question of reality or unreality
+between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly discharged his
+duty must do well, and that at least it was his comfort that he
+understood his duty, though he did not understand these confounding
+Appearances.  In this effort I succeeded far better than in the attempt
+to reason him out of his conviction.  He became calm; the occupations
+incidental to his post as the night advanced began to make larger demands
+on his attention: and I left him at two in the morning.  I had offered to
+stay through the night, but he would not hear of it.
+
+That I more than once looked back at the red light as I ascended the
+pathway, that I did not like the red light, and that I should have slept
+but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see no reason to conceal.  Nor
+did I like the two sequences of the accident and the dead girl.  I see no
+reason to conceal that either.
+
+But what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how ought I to
+act, having become the recipient of this disclosure?  I had proved the
+man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact; but how long
+might he remain so, in his state of mind?  Though in a subordinate
+position, still he held a most important trust, and would I (for
+instance) like to stake my own life on the chances of his continuing to
+execute it with precision?
+
+Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something treacherous in
+my communicating what he had told me to his superiors in the Company,
+without first being plain with himself and proposing a middle course to
+him, I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany him (otherwise keeping
+his secret for the present) to the wisest medical practitioner we could
+hear of in those parts, and to take his opinion.  A change in his time of
+duty would come round next night, he had apprised me, and he would be off
+an hour or two after sunrise, and on again soon after sunset.  I had
+appointed to return accordingly.
+
+Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to enjoy it.
+The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the field-path near the
+top of the deep cutting.  I would extend my walk for an hour, I said to
+myself, half an hour on and half an hour back, and it would then be time
+to go to my signal-man’s box.
+
+Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically
+looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him.  I cannot
+describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the mouth of the
+tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left sleeve across his
+eyes, passionately waving his right arm.
+
+The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a moment
+I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and that there was
+a little group of other men, standing at a short distance, to whom he
+seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made.  The Danger-light was not
+yet lighted.  Against its shaft, a little low hut, entirely new to me,
+had been made of some wooden supports and tarpaulin.  It looked no bigger
+than a bed.
+
+With an irresistible sense that something was wrong,—with a flashing
+self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of my leaving the man
+there, and causing no one to be sent to overlook or correct what he
+did,—I descended the notched path with all the speed I could make.
+
+“What is the matter?” I asked the men.
+
+“Signal-man killed this morning, sir.”
+
+“Not the man belonging to that box?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Not the man I know?”
+
+“You will recognise him, sir, if you knew him,” said the man who spoke
+for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head, and raising an end of
+the tarpaulin, “for his face is quite composed.”
+
+“O, how did this happen, how did this happen?” I asked, turning from one
+to another as the hut closed in again.
+
+“He was cut down by an engine, sir.  No man in England knew his work
+better.  But somehow he was not clear of the outer rail.  It was just at
+broad day.  He had struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand.  As
+the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was towards her, and she cut
+him down.  That man drove her, and was showing how it happened.  Show the
+gentleman, Tom.”
+
+The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former place at
+the mouth of the tunnel.
+
+“Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir,” he said, “I saw him at the
+end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass.  There was no time to
+check speed, and I knew him to be very careful.  As he didn’t seem to
+take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running down upon
+him, and called to him as loud as I could call.”
+
+“What did you say?”
+
+“I said, ‘Below there!  Look out!  Look out!  For God’s sake, clear the
+way!’”
+
+I started.
+
+“Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir.  I never left off calling to him.  I
+put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to the last;
+but it was no use.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious
+circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing it, point out the
+coincidence that the warning of the Engine-Driver included, not only the
+words which the unfortunate Signal-man had repeated to me as haunting
+him, but also the words which I myself—not he—had attached, and that only
+in my own mind, to the gesticulation he had imitated.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES.
+
+
+{121}  The original has eight chapters, which will be found in _All the
+Year Round_, vol. ii., old series; but those not printed here, excepting
+a page at the close, were not written by Mr. Dickens.
+
+{303}  This paper appeared as a chapter “To be taken with a Grain of
+Salt,” in Doctor Marigold’s Prescriptions.
+
+{312}  This story appeared as a portion of the Christmas number for 1866,
+“Mugby Junction,” of which other portions follow in “Barbox Brothers” and
+“The Boy at Mugby.”
+
+
+
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Three Ghost Stories, by Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Three Ghost Stories
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 9, 2013  [eBook #1289]
+[This file was first posted on April 5, 1998]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE GHOST STORIES***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall edition of
+&ldquo;Christmas Stories&rdquo; by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<h1>THREE GHOST STORIES</h1>
+<p style="text-align: center">by Charles Dickens</p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Haunted House</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page121">121</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Trial For Murder</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page303">303</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Signal-Man</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page312">312</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 121</span>THE
+HAUNTED HOUSE.<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">IN TWO CHAPTERS.</span> <a
+name="citation121"></a><a href="#footnote121"
+class="citation">[121]</a></h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">[1859.]</p>
+<h3>THE MORTALS IN THE HOUSE.</h3>
+<p><span class="smcap">Under</span> none of the accredited
+ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the conventional
+ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the
+house which is the subject of this Christmas piece.&nbsp; I saw
+it in the daylight, with the sun upon it.&nbsp; There was no
+wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted
+circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect.&nbsp; More
+than that: I had come to it direct from a railway station: it was
+not more than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I
+stood outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I
+could see the goods train running smoothly along the embankment
+in the valley.&nbsp; I will not say that everything was utterly
+commonplace, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to
+utterly commonplace people&mdash;and there my vanity steps in;
+but, I will take it on myself to say that anybody might see the
+house as I saw it, any fine autumn morning.</p>
+<p>The manner of my lighting on it was this.</p>
+<p>I was travelling towards London out of the North, intending to
+stop by the way, to look at the house.&nbsp; My health required a
+temporary residence in the country; and a friend of mine who knew
+that, and who had happened to drive past the house, had written
+to me to suggest it as a likely place.&nbsp; I had got into the
+train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and had woke up and had
+sat looking out of window at the brilliant Northern Lights in the
+sky, and had fallen asleep again, and had woke up again to find
+the night gone, with the usual discontented conviction on me that
+I hadn&rsquo;t been to sleep at all;&mdash;upon which question,
+in the first imbecility of that condition, I am ashamed to
+believe that I would have done wager by battle with the <a
+name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 122</span>man who sat
+opposite me.&nbsp; That opposite man had had, through the
+night&mdash;as that opposite man always has&mdash;several legs
+too many, and all of them too long.&nbsp; In addition to this
+unreasonable conduct (which was only to be expected of him), he
+had had a pencil and a pocket-book, and had been perpetually
+listening and taking notes.&nbsp; It had appeared to me that
+these aggravating notes related to the jolts and bumps of the
+carriage, and I should have resigned myself to his taking them,
+under a general supposition that he was in the civil-engineering
+way of life, if he had not sat staring straight over my head
+whenever he listened.&nbsp; He was a goggle-eyed gentleman of a
+perplexed aspect, and his demeanour became unbearable.</p>
+<p>It was a cold, dead morning (the sun not being up yet), and
+when I had out-watched the paling light of the fires of the iron
+country, and the curtain of heavy smoke that hung at once between
+me and the stars and between me and the day, I turned to my
+fellow-traveller and said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I <i>beg</i> your pardon, sir, but do you observe
+anything particular in me?&rdquo;&nbsp; For, really, he appeared
+to be taking down, either my travelling-cap or my hair, with a
+minuteness that was a liberty.</p>
+<p>The goggle-eyed gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as
+if the back of the carriage were a hundred miles off, and said,
+with a lofty look of compassion for my insignificance:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In you, sir?&mdash;B.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;B, sir?&rdquo; said I, growing warm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have nothing to do with you, sir,&rdquo; returned the
+gentleman; &ldquo;pray let me listen&mdash;O.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He enunciated this vowel after a pause, and noted it down.</p>
+<p>At first I was alarmed, for an Express lunatic and no
+communication with the guard, is a serious position.&nbsp; The
+thought came to my relief that the gentleman might be what is
+popularly called a Rapper: one of a sect for (some of) whom I
+have the highest respect, but whom I don&rsquo;t believe
+in.&nbsp; I was going to ask him the question, when he took the
+bread out of my mouth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You will excuse me,&rdquo; said the gentleman
+contemptuously, &ldquo;if I am too much in advance of common
+humanity to trouble myself at all about it.&nbsp; I have passed
+the night&mdash;as indeed I pass the whole of my time
+now&mdash;in spiritual intercourse.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;O!&rdquo; said I, somewhat snappishly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The conferences of the night began,&rdquo; continued
+the gentleman, turning several leaves of his note-book,
+&ldquo;with this message: &lsquo;Evil communications corrupt good
+manners.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sound,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;but, absolutely
+new?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;New from spirits,&rdquo; returned the gentleman.</p>
+<p>I could only repeat my rather snappish &ldquo;O!&rdquo; and
+ask if I might be favoured with the last communication.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;A bird in the hand,&rsquo;&rdquo; said the
+gentleman, reading his last entry with great solemnity,
+&ldquo;&lsquo;is worth two in the Bosh.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+123</span>&ldquo;Truly I am of the same opinion,&rdquo; said I;
+&ldquo;but shouldn&rsquo;t it be Bush?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It came to me, Bosh,&rdquo; returned the gentleman.</p>
+<p>The gentleman then informed me that the spirit of Socrates had
+delivered this special revelation in the course of the
+night.&nbsp; &ldquo;My friend, I hope you are pretty well.&nbsp;
+There are two in this railway carriage.&nbsp; How do you
+do?&nbsp; There are seventeen thousand four hundred and
+seventy-nine spirits here, but you cannot see them.&nbsp;
+Pythagoras is here.&nbsp; He is not at liberty to mention it, but
+hopes you like travelling.&rdquo;&nbsp; Galileo likewise had
+dropped in, with this scientific intelligence.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am
+glad to see you, <i>amico</i>.&nbsp; <i>Come sta</i>?&nbsp; Water
+will freeze when it is cold enough.&nbsp;
+<i>Addio</i>!&rdquo;&nbsp; In the course of the night, also, the
+following phenomena had occurred.&nbsp; Bishop Butler had
+insisted on spelling his name, &ldquo;Bubler,&rdquo; for which
+offence against orthography and good manners he had been
+dismissed as out of temper.&nbsp; John Milton (suspected of
+wilful mystification) had repudiated the authorship of Paradise
+Lost, and had introduced, as joint authors of that poem, two
+Unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and
+Scadgingtone.&nbsp; And Prince Arthur, nephew of King John of
+England, had described himself as tolerably comfortable in the
+seventh circle, where he was learning to paint on velvet, under
+the direction of Mrs. Trimmer and Mary Queen of Scots.</p>
+<p>If this should meet the eye of the gentleman who favoured me
+with these disclosures, I trust he will excuse my confessing that
+the sight of the rising sun, and the contemplation of the
+magnificent Order of the vast Universe, made me impatient of
+them.&nbsp; In a word, I was so impatient of them, that I was
+mightily glad to get out at the next station, and to exchange
+these clouds and vapours for the free air of Heaven.</p>
+<p>By that time it was a beautiful morning.&nbsp; As I walked
+away among such leaves as had already fallen from the golden,
+brown, and russet trees; and as I looked around me on the wonders
+of Creation, and thought of the steady, unchanging, and
+harmonious laws by which they are sustained; the
+gentleman&rsquo;s spiritual intercourse seemed to me as poor a
+piece of journey-work as ever this world saw.&nbsp; In which
+heathen state of mind, I came within view of the house, and
+stopped to examine it attentively.</p>
+<p>It was a solitary house, standing in a sadly neglected garden:
+a pretty even square of some two acres.&nbsp; It was a house of
+about the time of George the Second; as stiff, as cold, as
+formal, and in as bad taste, as could possibly be desired by the
+most loyal admirer of the whole quartet of Georges.&nbsp; It was
+uninhabited, but had, within a year or two, been cheaply repaired
+to render it habitable; I say cheaply, because the work had been
+done in a surface manner, and was already decaying as to the
+paint and plaster, though the colours were fresh.&nbsp; A
+lop-sided board drooped over the garden wall, announcing that it
+was &ldquo;to let on very reasonable terms, well <a
+name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+124</span>furnished.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was much too closely and
+heavily shadowed by trees, and, in particular, there were six
+tall poplars before the front windows, which were excessively
+melancholy, and the site of which had been extremely ill
+chosen.</p>
+<p>It was easy to see that it was an avoided house&mdash;a house
+that was shunned by the village, to which my eye was guided by a
+church spire some half a mile off&mdash;a house that nobody would
+take.&nbsp; And the natural inference was, that it had the
+reputation of being a haunted house.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p121b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"The haunted house"
+title=
+"The haunted house"
+src="images/p121s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>No period within the four-and-twenty hours of day and night is
+so solemn to me, as the early morning.&nbsp; In the summer-time,
+I often rise very early, and repair to my room to do a
+day&rsquo;s work before breakfast, and I am always on those
+occasions deeply impressed by the stillness and solitude around
+me.&nbsp; Besides that there is something awful in the being
+surrounded by familiar faces asleep&mdash;in the knowledge that
+those who are dearest to us and to whom we are dearest, are
+profoundly unconscious of us, in an impassive state, anticipative
+of that mysterious condition to which we are all
+tending&mdash;the stopped life, the broken threads of yesterday,
+the deserted seat, the closed book, the unfinished but abandoned
+occupation, all are images of Death.&nbsp; The tranquillity of
+the hour is the tranquillity of Death.&nbsp; The colour and the
+chill have the same association.&nbsp; Even a certain air that
+familiar household objects take upon them when they first emerge
+from the shadows of the night into the morning, of being newer,
+and as they used to be long ago, has its counterpart in the
+subsidence of the worn face of maturity or age, in death, into
+the old youthful look.&nbsp; Moreover, I once saw the apparition
+of my father, at this hour.&nbsp; He was alive and well, and
+nothing ever came of it, but I saw him in the daylight, sitting
+with his back towards me, on a seat that stood beside my
+bed.&nbsp; His head was resting on his hand, and whether he was
+slumbering or grieving, I could not discern.&nbsp; Amazed to see
+him there, I sat up, moved my position, leaned out of bed, and
+watched him.&nbsp; As he did not move, I spoke to him more than
+once.&nbsp; As he did not move then, I became alarmed and laid my
+hand upon his shoulder, as I thought&mdash;and there was no such
+thing.</p>
+<p>For all these reasons, and for others less easily and briefly
+statable, I find the early morning to be my most ghostly
+time.&nbsp; Any house would be more or less haunted, to me, in
+the early morning; and a haunted house could scarcely address me
+to greater advantage than then.</p>
+<p>I walked on into the village, with the desertion of this house
+upon my mind, and I found the landlord of the little inn, sanding
+his door-step.&nbsp; I bespoke breakfast, and broached the
+subject of the house.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is it haunted?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>The landlord looked at me, shook his head, and answered,
+&ldquo;I say nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then it <i>is</i> haunted?&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+125</span>&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; cried the landlord, in an outburst
+of frankness that had the appearance of
+desperation&mdash;&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t sleep in it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If I wanted to have all the bells in a house ring, with
+nobody to ring &rsquo;em; and all the doors in a house bang, with
+nobody to bang &rsquo;em; and all sorts of feet treading about,
+with no feet there; why, then,&rdquo; said the landlord,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d sleep in that house.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is anything seen there?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The landlord looked at me again, and then, with his former
+appearance of desperation, called down his stable-yard for
+&ldquo;Ikey!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The call produced a high-shouldered young fellow, with a round
+red face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous
+mouth, a turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple
+bars, with mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing
+upon him, and to be in a fair way&mdash;if it were not
+pruned&mdash;of covering his head and overunning his boots.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This gentleman wants to know,&rdquo; said the landlord,
+&ldquo;if anything&rsquo;s seen at the Poplars.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&rsquo;Ooded woman with a howl,&rdquo; said Ikey, in a
+state of great freshness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean a cry?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I mean a bird, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A hooded woman with an owl.&nbsp; Dear me!&nbsp; Did
+you ever see her?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I seen the howl.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never the woman?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not so plain as the howl, but they always keeps
+together.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Has anybody ever seen the woman as plainly as the
+owl?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Lord bless you, sir!&nbsp; Lots.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Lord bless you, sir!&nbsp; Lots.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The general-dealer opposite, for instance, who is
+opening his shop?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perkins?&nbsp; Bless you, Perkins wouldn&rsquo;t go
+a-nigh the place.&nbsp; No!&rdquo; observed the young man, with
+considerable feeling; &ldquo;he an&rsquo;t overwise, an&rsquo;t
+Perkins, but he an&rsquo;t such a fool as <i>that</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>(Here, the landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins&rsquo;s
+knowing better.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who is&mdash;or who was&mdash;the hooded woman with the
+owl?&nbsp; Do you know?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; said Ikey, holding up his cap with one
+hand while he scratched his head with the other, &ldquo;they say,
+in general, that she was murdered, and the howl he &rsquo;ooted
+the while.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This very concise summary of the facts was all I could learn,
+except that a young man, as hearty and likely a young man as ever
+I see, had been took with fits and held down in &rsquo;em, after
+seeing the hooded woman.&nbsp; Also, that a personage, dimly
+described as &ldquo;a hold chap, a <a name="page126"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 126</span>sort of one-eyed tramp, answering to
+the name of Joby, unless you challenged him as Greenwood, and
+then he said, &lsquo;Why not? and even if so, mind your own
+business,&rsquo;&rdquo; had encountered the hooded woman, a
+matter of five or six times.&nbsp; But, I was not materially
+assisted by these witnesses: inasmuch as the first was in
+California, and the last was, as Ikey said (and he was confirmed
+by the landlord), Anywheres.</p>
+<p>Now, although I regard with a hushed and solemn fear, the
+mysteries, between which and this state of existence is
+interposed the barrier of the great trial and change that fall on
+all the things that live; and although I have not the audacity to
+pretend that I know anything of them; I can no more reconcile the
+mere banging of doors, ringing of bells, creaking of boards, and
+such-like insignificances, with the majestic beauty and pervading
+analogy of all the Divine rules that I am permitted to
+understand, than I had been able, a little while before, to yoke
+the spiritual intercourse of my fellow-traveller to the chariot
+of the rising sun.&nbsp; Moreover, I had lived in two haunted
+houses&mdash;both abroad.&nbsp; In one of these, an old Italian
+palace, which bore the reputation of being very badly haunted
+indeed, and which had recently been twice abandoned on that
+account, I lived eight months, most tranquilly and pleasantly:
+notwithstanding that the house had a score of mysterious
+bedrooms, which were never used, and possessed, in one large room
+in which I sat reading, times out of number at all hours, and
+next to which I slept, a haunted chamber of the first
+pretensions.&nbsp; I gently hinted these considerations to the
+landlord.&nbsp; And as to this particular house having a bad
+name, I reasoned with him, Why, how many things had bad names
+undeservedly, and how easy it was to give bad names, and did he
+not think that if he and I were persistently to whisper in the
+village that any weird-looking, old drunken tinker of the
+neighbourhood had sold himself to the Devil, he would come in
+time to be suspected of that commercial venture!&nbsp; All this
+wise talk was perfectly ineffective with the landlord, I am bound
+to confess, and was as dead a failure as ever I made in my
+life.</p>
+<p>To cut this part of the story short, I was piqued about the
+haunted house, and was already half resolved to take it.&nbsp;
+So, after breakfast, I got the keys from Perkins&rsquo;s
+brother-in-law (a whip and harness maker, who keeps the Post
+Office, and is under submission to a most rigorous wife of the
+Doubly Seceding Little Emmanuel persuasion), and went up to the
+house, attended by my landlord and by Ikey.</p>
+<p>Within, I found it, as I had expected, transcendently
+dismal.&nbsp; The slowly changing shadows waved on it from the
+heavy trees, were doleful in the last degree; the house was
+ill-placed, ill-built, ill-planned, and ill-fitted.&nbsp; It was
+damp, it was not free from dry rot, there was a flavour of rats
+in it, and it was the gloomy victim of that indescribable decay
+which settles on all the work of man&rsquo;s hands whenever
+it&rsquo;s not turned to man&rsquo;s account.&nbsp; The kitchens
+and offices <a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+127</span>were too large, and too remote from each other.&nbsp;
+Above stairs and below, waste tracts of passage intervened
+between patches of fertility represented by rooms; and there was
+a mouldy old well with a green growth upon it, hiding like a
+murderous trap, near the bottom of the back-stairs, under the
+double row of bells.&nbsp; One of these bells was labelled, on a
+black ground in faded white letters, <span
+class="smcap">Master</span> B.&nbsp; This, they told me, was the
+bell that rang the most.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who was Master B.?&rdquo; I asked.&nbsp; &ldquo;Is it
+known what he did while the owl hooted?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Rang the bell,&rdquo; said Ikey.</p>
+<p>I was rather struck by the prompt dexterity with which this
+young man pitched his fur cap at the bell, and rang it
+himself.&nbsp; It was a loud, unpleasant bell, and made a very
+disagreeable sound.&nbsp; The other bells were inscribed
+according to the names of the rooms to which their wires were
+conducted: as &ldquo;Picture Room,&rdquo; &ldquo;Double
+Room,&rdquo; &ldquo;Clock Room,&rdquo; and the like.&nbsp;
+Following Master B.&rsquo;s bell to its source I found that young
+gentleman to have had but indifferent third-class accommodation
+in a triangular cabin under the cock-loft, with a corner
+fireplace which Master B. must have been exceedingly small if he
+were ever able to warm himself at, and a corner chimney-piece
+like a pyramidal staircase to the ceiling for Tom Thumb.&nbsp;
+The papering of one side of the room had dropped down bodily,
+with fragments of plaster adhering to it, and almost blocked up
+the door.&nbsp; It appeared that Master B., in his spiritual
+condition, always made a point of pulling the paper down.&nbsp;
+Neither the landlord nor Ikey could suggest why he made such a
+fool of himself.</p>
+<p>Except that the house had an immensely large rambling loft at
+top, I made no other discoveries.&nbsp; It was moderately well
+furnished, but sparely.&nbsp; Some of the furniture&mdash;say, a
+third&mdash;was as old as the house; the rest was of various
+periods within the last half-century.&nbsp; I was referred to a
+corn-chandler in the market-place of the county town to treat for
+the house.&nbsp; I went that day, and I took it for six
+months.</p>
+<p>It was just the middle of October when I moved in with my
+maiden sister (I venture to call her eight-and-thirty, she is so
+very handsome, sensible, and engaging).&nbsp; We took with us, a
+deaf stable-man, my bloodhound Turk, two women servants, and a
+young person called an Odd Girl.&nbsp; I have reason to record of
+the attendant last enumerated, who was one of the Saint
+Lawrence&rsquo;s Union Female Orphans, that she was a fatal
+mistake and a disastrous engagement.</p>
+<p>The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was
+a raw cold day when we took possession, and the gloom of the
+house was most depressing.&nbsp; The cook (an amiable woman, but
+of a weak turn of intellect) burst into tears on beholding the
+kitchen, and requested that her silver watch might be delivered
+over to her sister (2 Tuppintock&rsquo;s Gardens, Liggs&rsquo;s
+Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of anything happening to her
+from the damp.&nbsp; Streaker, the housemaid, feigned <a
+name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+128</span>cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr.&nbsp; The Odd
+Girl, who had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and
+made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the
+scullery window, and rearing an oak.</p>
+<p>We went, before dark, through all the natural&mdash;as opposed
+to supernatural&mdash;miseries incidental to our state.&nbsp;
+Dispiriting reports ascended (like the smoke) from the basement
+in volumes, and descended from the upper rooms.&nbsp; There was
+no rolling-pin, there was no salamander (which failed to surprise
+me, for I don&rsquo;t know what it is), there was nothing in the
+house, what there was, was broken, the last people must have
+lived like pigs, what could the meaning of the landlord be?&nbsp;
+Through these distresses, the Odd Girl was cheerful and
+exemplary.&nbsp; But within four hours after dark we had got into
+a supernatural groove, and the Odd Girl had seen
+&ldquo;Eyes,&rdquo; and was in hysterics.</p>
+<p>My sister and I had agreed to keep the haunting strictly to
+ourselves, and my impression was, and still is, that I had not
+left Ikey, when he helped to unload the cart, alone with the
+women, or any one of them, for one minute.&nbsp; Nevertheless, as
+I say, the Odd Girl had &ldquo;seen Eyes&rdquo; (no other
+explanation could ever be drawn from her), before nine, and by
+ten o&rsquo;clock had had as much vinegar applied to her as would
+pickle a handsome salmon.</p>
+<p>I leave a discerning public to judge of my feelings, when,
+under these untoward circumstances, at about half-past ten
+o&rsquo;clock Master B.&rsquo;s bell began to ring in a most
+infuriated manner, and Turk howled until the house resounded with
+his lamentations!</p>
+<p>I hope I may never again be in a state of mind so unchristian
+as the mental frame in which I lived for some weeks, respecting
+the memory of Master B.&nbsp; Whether his bell was rung by rats,
+or mice, or bats, or wind, or what other accidental vibration, or
+sometimes by one cause, sometimes another, and sometimes by
+collusion, I don&rsquo;t know; but, certain it is, that it did
+ring two nights out of three, until I conceived the happy idea of
+twisting Master B.&rsquo;s neck&mdash;in other words, breaking
+his bell short off&mdash;and silencing that young gentleman, as
+to my experience and belief, for ever.</p>
+<p>But, by that time, the Odd Girl had developed such improving
+powers of catalepsy, that she had become a shining example of
+that very inconvenient disorder.&nbsp; She would stiffen, like a
+Guy Fawkes endowed with unreason, on the most irrelevant
+occasions.&nbsp; I would address the servants in a lucid manner,
+pointing out to them that I had painted Master B.&rsquo;s room
+and balked the paper, and taken Master B.&rsquo;s bell away and
+balked the ringing, and if they could suppose that that
+confounded boy had lived and died, to clothe himself with no
+better behaviour than would most unquestionably have brought him
+and the sharpest particles of a birch-broom into close
+acquaintance in the present imperfect state of existence, could
+they also suppose a mere poor human being, such as I was, capable
+by <a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 129</span>those
+contemptible means of counteracting and limiting the powers of
+the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?&mdash;I
+say I would become emphatic and cogent, not to say rather
+complacent, in such an address, when it would all go for nothing
+by reason of the Odd Girl&rsquo;s suddenly stiffening from the
+toes upward, and glaring among us like a parochial
+petrifaction.</p>
+<p>Streaker, the housemaid, too, had an attribute of a most
+discomfiting nature.&nbsp; I am unable to say whether she was of
+an unusually lymphatic temperament, or what else was the matter
+with her, but this young woman became a mere Distillery for the
+production of the largest and most transparent tears I ever met
+with.&nbsp; Combined with these characteristics, was a peculiar
+tenacity of hold in those specimens, so that they didn&rsquo;t
+fall, but hung upon her face and nose.&nbsp; In this condition,
+and mildly and deplorably shaking her head, her silence would
+throw me more heavily than the Admirable Crichton could have done
+in a verbal disputation for a purse of money.&nbsp; Cook,
+likewise, always covered me with confusion as with a garment, by
+neatly winding up the session with the protest that the Ouse was
+wearing her out, and by meekly repeating her last wishes
+regarding her silver watch.</p>
+<p>As to our nightly life, the contagion of suspicion and fear
+was among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky.&nbsp;
+Hooded woman?&nbsp; According to the accounts, we were in a
+perfect Convent of hooded women.&nbsp; Noises?&nbsp; With that
+contagion downstairs, I myself have sat in the dismal parlour,
+listening, until I have heard so many and such strange noises,
+that they would have chilled my blood if I had not warmed it by
+dashing out to make discoveries.&nbsp; Try this in bed, in the
+dead of the night: try this at your own comfortable fire-side, in
+the life of the night.&nbsp; You can fill any house with noises,
+if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in your
+nervous system.</p>
+<p>I repeat; the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us,
+and there is no such contagion under the sky.&nbsp; The women
+(their noses in a chronic state of excoriation from
+smelling-salts) were always primed and loaded for a swoon, and
+ready to go off with hair-triggers.&nbsp; The two elder detached
+the Odd Girl on all expeditions that were considered doubly
+hazardous, and she always established the reputation of such
+adventures by coming back cataleptic.&nbsp; If Cook or Streaker
+went overhead after dark, we knew we should presently hear a bump
+on the ceiling; and this took place so constantly, that it was as
+if a fighting man were engaged to go about the house,
+administering a touch of his art which I believe is called The
+Auctioneer, to every domestic he met with.</p>
+<p>It was in vain to do anything.&nbsp; It was in vain to be
+frightened, for the moment in one&rsquo;s own person, by a real
+owl, and then to show the owl.&nbsp; It was in vain to discover,
+by striking an accidental discord on the piano, that Turk always
+howled at particular notes and combinations.&nbsp; <a
+name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 130</span>It was in
+vain to be a Rhadamanthus with the bells, and if an unfortunate
+bell rang without leave, to have it down inexorably and silence
+it.&nbsp; It was in vain to fire up chimneys, let torches down
+the well, charge furiously into suspected rooms and
+recesses.&nbsp; We changed servants, and it was no better.&nbsp;
+The new set ran away, and a third set came, and it was no
+better.&nbsp; At last, our comfortable housekeeping got to be so
+disorganised and wretched, that I one night dejectedly said to my
+sister: &ldquo;Patty, I begin to despair of our getting people to
+go on with us here, and I think we must give this up.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>My sister, who is a woman of immense spirit, replied,
+&ldquo;No, John, don&rsquo;t give it up.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t be
+beaten, John.&nbsp; There is another way.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And what is that?&rdquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;John,&rdquo; returned my sister, &ldquo;if we are not
+to be driven out of this house, and that for no reason whatever,
+that is apparent to you or me, we must help ourselves and take
+the house wholly and solely into our own hands.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But, the servants,&rdquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Have no servants,&rdquo; said my sister, boldly.</p>
+<p>Like most people in my grade of life, I had never thought of
+the possibility of going on without those faithful
+obstructions.&nbsp; The notion was so new to me when suggested,
+that I looked very doubtful.&nbsp; &ldquo;We know they come here
+to be frightened and infect one another, and we know they are
+frightened and do infect one another,&rdquo; said my sister.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With the exception of Bottles,&rdquo; I observed, in a
+meditative tone.</p>
+<p>(The deaf stable-man.&nbsp; I kept him in my service, and
+still keep him, as a phenomenon of moroseness not to be matched
+in England.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To be sure, John,&rdquo; assented my sister;
+&ldquo;except Bottles.&nbsp; And what does that go to
+prove?&nbsp; Bottles talks to nobody, and hears nobody unless he
+is absolutely roared at, and what alarm has Bottles ever given,
+or taken!&nbsp; None.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This was perfectly true; the individual in question having
+retired, every night at ten o&rsquo;clock, to his bed over the
+coach-house, with no other company than a pitchfork and a pail of
+water.&nbsp; That the pail of water would have been over me, and
+the pitchfork through me, if I had put myself without
+announcement in Bottles&rsquo;s way after that minute, I had
+deposited in my own mind as a fact worth remembering.&nbsp;
+Neither had Bottles ever taken the least notice of any of our
+many uproars.&nbsp; An imperturbable and speechless man, he had
+sat at his supper, with Streaker present in a swoon, and the Odd
+Girl marble, and had only put another potato in his cheek, or
+profited by the general misery to help himself to beefsteak
+pie.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And so,&rdquo; continued my sister, &ldquo;I exempt
+Bottles.&nbsp; And considering, John, that the house is too
+large, and perhaps too lonely, to be kept well in hand by
+Bottles, you, and me, I propose that we cast about among our
+friends for a certain selected number of the most reliable and
+willing&mdash;form a Society here for three months&mdash;wait
+upon ourselves <a name="page131"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+131</span>and one another&mdash;live cheerfully and
+socially&mdash;and see what happens.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I was so charmed with my sister, that I embraced her on the
+spot, and went into her plan with the greatest ardour.</p>
+<p>We were then in the third week of November; but, we took our
+measures so vigorously, and were so well seconded by the friends
+in whom we confided, that there was still a week of the month
+unexpired, when our party all came down together merrily, and
+mustered in the haunted house.</p>
+<p>I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I made
+while my sister and I were yet alone.&nbsp; It occurring to me as
+not improbable that Turk howled in the house at night, partly
+because he wanted to get out of it, I stationed him in his kennel
+outside, but unchained; and I seriously warned the village that
+any man who came in his way must not expect to leave him without
+a rip in his own throat.&nbsp; I then casually asked Ikey if he
+were a judge of a gun?&nbsp; On his saying, &ldquo;Yes, sir, I
+knows a good gun when I sees her,&rdquo; I begged the favour of
+his stepping up to the house and looking at mine.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>She&rsquo;s</i> a true one, sir,&rdquo; said Ikey,
+after inspecting a double-barrelled rifle that I bought in New
+York a few years ago.&nbsp; &ldquo;No mistake about <i>her</i>,
+sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ikey,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t mention it; I
+have seen something in this house.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir?&rdquo; he whispered, greedily opening his
+eyes.&nbsp; &ldquo;&rsquo;Ooded lady, sir?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be frightened,&rdquo; said I.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It was a figure rather like you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Lord, sir?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ikey!&rdquo; said I, shaking hands with him warmly: I
+may say affectionately; &ldquo;if there is any truth in these
+ghost-stories, the greatest service I can do you, is, to fire at
+that figure.&nbsp; And I promise you, by Heaven and earth, I will
+do it with this gun if I see it again!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The young man thanked me, and took his leave with some little
+precipitation, after declining a glass of liquor.&nbsp; I
+imparted my secret to him, because I had never quite forgotten
+his throwing his cap at the bell; because I had, on another
+occasion, noticed something very like a fur cap, lying not far
+from the bell, one night when it had burst out ringing; and
+because I had remarked that we were at our ghostliest whenever he
+came up in the evening to comfort the servants.&nbsp; Let me do
+Ikey no injustice.&nbsp; He was afraid of the house, and believed
+in its being haunted; and yet he would play false on the haunting
+side, so surely as he got an opportunity.&nbsp; The Odd
+Girl&rsquo;s case was exactly similar.&nbsp; She went about the
+house in a state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously and
+wilfully, and invented many of the alarms she spread, and made
+many of the sounds we heard.&nbsp; I had had my eye on the two,
+and I know it.&nbsp; It is not necessary for me, here, to account
+for this preposterous state of mind; I content myself with
+remarking that it is familiarly known to every intelligent man
+who <a name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 132</span>has
+had fair medical, legal, or other watchful experience; that it is
+as well established and as common a state of mind as any with
+which observers are acquainted; and that it is one of the first
+elements, above all others, rationally to be suspected in, and
+strictly looked for, and separated from, any question of this
+kind.</p>
+<p>To return to our party.&nbsp; The first thing we did when we
+were all assembled, was, to draw lots for bedrooms.&nbsp; That
+done, and every bedroom, and, indeed, the whole house, having
+been minutely examined by the whole body, we allotted the various
+household duties, as if we had been on a gipsy party, or a
+yachting party, or a hunting party, or were shipwrecked.&nbsp; I
+then recounted the floating rumours concerning the hooded lady,
+the owl, and Master B.: with others, still more filmy, which had
+floated about during our occupation, relative to some ridiculous
+old ghost of the female gender who went up and down, carrying the
+ghost of a round table; and also to an impalpable Jackass, whom
+nobody was ever able to catch.&nbsp; Some of these ideas I really
+believe our people below had communicated to one another in some
+diseased way, without conveying them in words.&nbsp; We then
+gravely called one another to witness, that we were not there to
+be deceived, or to deceive&mdash;which we considered pretty much
+the same thing&mdash;and that, with a serious sense of
+responsibility, we would be strictly true to one another, and
+would strictly follow out the truth.&nbsp; The understanding was
+established, that any one who heard unusual noises in the night,
+and who wished to trace them, should knock at my door; lastly,
+that on Twelfth Night, the last night of holy Christmas, all our
+individual experiences since that then present hour of our coming
+together in the haunted house, should be brought to light for the
+good of all; and that we would hold our peace on the subject till
+then, unless on some remarkable provocation to break silence.</p>
+<p>We were, in number and in character, as follows:</p>
+<p>First&mdash;to get my sister and myself out of the
+way&mdash;there were we two.&nbsp; In the drawing of lots, my
+sister drew her own room, and I drew Master B.&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
+Next, there was our first cousin John Herschel, so called after
+the great astronomer: than whom I suppose a better man at a
+telescope does not breathe.&nbsp; With him, was his wife: a
+charming creature to whom he had been married in the previous
+spring.&nbsp; I thought it (under the circumstances) rather
+imprudent to bring her, because there is no knowing what even a
+false alarm may do at such a time; but I suppose he knew his own
+business best, and I must say that if she had been <i>my</i>
+wife, I never could have left her endearing and bright face
+behind.&nbsp; They drew the Clock Room.&nbsp; Alfred Starling, an
+uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight-and-twenty for whom I
+have the greatest liking, was in the Double Room; mine, usually,
+and designated by that name from having a dressing-room within
+it, with two large and cumbersome windows, which no wedges
+<i>I</i> was ever able to make, would keep from shaking, in any
+weather, <a name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+133</span>wind or no wind.&nbsp; Alfred is a young fellow who
+pretends to be &ldquo;fast&rdquo; (another word for loose, as I
+understand the term), but who is much too good and sensible for
+that nonsense, and who would have distinguished himself before
+now, if his father had not unfortunately left him a small
+independence of two hundred a year, on the strength of which his
+only occupation in life has been to spend six.&nbsp; I am in
+hopes, however, that his Banker may break, or that he may enter
+into some speculation guaranteed to pay twenty per cent.; for, I
+am convinced that if he could only be ruined, his fortune is
+made.&nbsp; Belinda Bates, bosom friend of my sister, and a most
+intellectual, amiable, and delightful girl, got the Picture
+Room.&nbsp; She has a fine genius for poetry, combined with real
+business earnestness, and &ldquo;goes in&rdquo;&mdash;to use an
+expression of Alfred&rsquo;s&mdash;for Woman&rsquo;s mission,
+Woman&rsquo;s rights, Woman&rsquo;s wrongs, and everything that
+is woman&rsquo;s with a capital W, or is not and ought to be, or
+is and ought not to be.&nbsp; &ldquo;Most praiseworthy, my dear,
+and Heaven prosper you!&rdquo; I whispered to her on the first
+night of my taking leave of her at the Picture-Room door,
+&ldquo;but don&rsquo;t overdo it.&nbsp; And in respect of the
+great necessity there is, my darling, for more employments being
+within the reach of Woman than our civilisation has as yet
+assigned to her, don&rsquo;t fly at the unfortunate men, even
+those men who are at first sight in your way, as if they were the
+natural oppressors of your sex; for, trust me, Belinda, they do
+sometimes spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters,
+mothers, aunts, and grandmothers; and the play is, really, not
+<i>all</i> Wolf and Red Riding-Hood, but has other parts in
+it.&rdquo;&nbsp; However, I digress.</p>
+<p>Belinda, as I have mentioned, occupied the Picture Room.&nbsp;
+We had but three other chambers: the Corner Room, the Cupboard
+Room, and the Garden Room.&nbsp; My old friend, Jack Governor,
+&ldquo;slung his hammock,&rdquo; as he called it, in the Corner
+Room.&nbsp; I have always regarded Jack as the finest-looking
+sailor that ever sailed.&nbsp; He is gray now, but as handsome as
+he was a quarter of a century ago&mdash;nay, handsomer.&nbsp; A
+portly, cheery, well-built figure of a broad-shouldered man, with
+a frank smile, a brilliant dark eye, and a rich dark
+eyebrow.&nbsp; I remember those under darker hair, and they look
+all the better for their silver setting.&nbsp; He has been
+wherever his Union namesake flies, has Jack, and I have met old
+shipmates of his, away in the Mediterranean and on the other side
+of the Atlantic, who have beamed and brightened at the casual
+mention of his name, and have cried, &ldquo;You know Jack
+Governor?&nbsp; Then you know a prince of men!&rdquo;&nbsp; That
+he is!&nbsp; And so unmistakably a naval officer, that if you
+were to meet him coming out of an Esquimaux snow-hut in
+seal&rsquo;s skin, you would be vaguely persuaded he was in full
+naval uniform.</p>
+<p>Jack once had that bright clear eye of his on my sister; but,
+it fell out that he married another lady and took her to South
+America, where she died.&nbsp; This was a dozen years ago or
+more.&nbsp; He brought down with him to our haunted house a
+little cask of salt beef; for, he <a name="page134"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 134</span>is always convinced that all salt
+beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion, and invariably,
+when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau.&nbsp;
+He had also volunteered to bring with him one &ldquo;Nat
+Beaver,&rdquo; an old comrade of his, captain of a
+merchantman.&nbsp; Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face and
+figure, and apparently as hard as a block all over, proved to be
+an intelligent man, with a world of watery experiences in him,
+and great practical knowledge.&nbsp; At times, there was a
+curious nervousness about him, apparently the lingering result of
+some old illness; but, it seldom lasted many minutes.&nbsp; He
+got the Cupboard Room, and lay there next to Mr. Undery, my
+friend and solicitor: who came down, in an amateur capacity,
+&ldquo;to go through with it,&rdquo; as he said, and who plays
+whist better than the whole Law List, from the red cover at the
+beginning to the red cover at the end.</p>
+<p>I never was happier in my life, and I believe it was the
+universal feeling among us.&nbsp; Jack Governor, always a man of
+wonderful resources, was Chief Cook, and made some of the best
+dishes I ever ate, including unapproachable curries.&nbsp; My
+sister was pastrycook and confectioner.&nbsp; Starling and I were
+Cook&rsquo;s Mate, turn and turn about, and on special occasions
+the chief cook &ldquo;pressed&rdquo; Mr. Beaver.&nbsp; We had a
+great deal of out-door sport and exercise, but nothing was
+neglected within, and there was no ill-humour or misunderstanding
+among us, and our evenings were so delightful that we had at
+least one good reason for being reluctant to go to bed.</p>
+<p>We had a few night alarms in the beginning.&nbsp; On the first
+night, I was knocked up by Jack with a most wonderful
+ship&rsquo;s lantern in his hand, like the gills of some monster
+of the deep, who informed me that he &ldquo;was going aloft to
+the main truck,&rdquo; to have the weathercock down.&nbsp; It was
+a stormy night and I remonstrated; but Jack called my attention
+to its making a sound like a cry of despair, and said somebody
+would be &ldquo;hailing a ghost&rdquo; presently, if it
+wasn&rsquo;t done.&nbsp; So, up to the top of the house, where I
+could hardly stand for the wind, we went, accompanied by Mr.
+Beaver; and there Jack, lantern and all, with Mr. Beaver after
+him, swarmed up to the top of a cupola, some two dozen feet above
+the chimneys, and stood upon nothing particular, coolly knocking
+the weathercock off, until they both got into such good spirits
+with the wind and the height, that I thought they would never
+come down.&nbsp; Another night, they turned out again, and had a
+chimney-cowl off.&nbsp; Another night, they cut a sobbing and
+gulping water-pipe away.&nbsp; Another night, they found out
+something else.&nbsp; On several occasions, they both, in the
+coolest manner, simultaneously dropped out of their respective
+bedroom windows, hand over hand by their counterpanes, to
+&ldquo;overhaul&rdquo; something mysterious in the garden.</p>
+<p>The engagement among us was faithfully kept, and nobody
+revealed anything.&nbsp; All we knew was, if any one&rsquo;s room
+were haunted, no one looked the worse for it.</p>
+<h3><a name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span>THE
+GHOST IN MASTER B.&rsquo;S ROOM.</h3>
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> I established myself in the
+triangular garret which had gained so distinguished a reputation,
+my thoughts naturally turned to Master B.&nbsp; My speculations
+about him were uneasy and manifold.&nbsp; Whether his Christian
+name was Benjamin, Bissextile (from his having been born in Leap
+Year), Bartholomew, or Bill.&nbsp; Whether the initial letter
+belonged to his family name, and that was Baxter, Black, Brown,
+Barker, Buggins, Baker, or Bird.&nbsp; Whether he was a
+foundling, and had been baptized B.&nbsp; Whether he was a
+lion-hearted boy, and B. was short for Briton, or for Bull.&nbsp;
+Whether he could possibly have been kith and kin to an
+illustrious lady who brightened my own childhood, and had come of
+the blood of the brilliant Mother Bunch?</p>
+<p>With these profitless meditations I tormented myself
+much.&nbsp; I also carried the mysterious letter into the
+appearance and pursuits of the deceased; wondering whether he
+dressed in Blue, wore Boots (he couldn&rsquo;t have been Bald),
+was a boy of Brains, liked Books, was good at Bowling, had any
+skill as a Boxer, even in his Buoyant Boyhood Bathed from a
+Bathing-machine at Bognor, Bangor, Bournemouth, Brighton, or
+Broadstairs, like a Bounding Billiard Ball?</p>
+<p>So, from the first, I was haunted by the letter B.</p>
+<p>It was not long before I remarked that I never by any hazard
+had a dream of Master B., or of anything belonging to him.&nbsp;
+But, the instant I awoke from sleep, at whatever hour of the
+night, my thoughts took him up, and roamed away, trying to attach
+his initial letter to something that would fit it and keep it
+quiet.</p>
+<p>For six nights, I had been worried thus in Master B.&rsquo;s
+room, when I began to perceive that things were going wrong.</p>
+<p>The first appearance that presented itself was early in the
+morning when it was but just daylight and no more.&nbsp; I was
+standing shaving at my glass, when I suddenly discovered, to my
+consternation and amazement, that I was shaving&mdash;not
+myself&mdash;I am fifty&mdash;but a boy.&nbsp; Apparently Master
+B.!</p>
+<p>I trembled and looked over my shoulder; nothing there.&nbsp; I
+looked again in the glass, and distinctly saw the features and
+expression of a boy, who was shaving, not to get rid of a beard,
+but to get one.&nbsp; Extremely troubled in my mind, I took a few
+turns in the room, and went back to the looking-glass, resolved
+to steady my hand and complete the operation in which I had been
+disturbed.&nbsp; Opening my eyes, which I had shut while
+recovering my firmness, I now met in the glass, looking straight
+at me, the eyes of a young man of four or five and twenty.&nbsp;
+Terrified by this new ghost, I closed my eyes, and made a strong
+effort to recover myself.&nbsp; Opening them again, I saw,
+shaving his cheek in the glass, my father, who has long been
+dead.&nbsp; Nay, I even saw my grandfather too, whom I never did
+see in my life.</p>
+<p><a name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+136</span>Although naturally much affected by these remarkable
+visitations, I determined to keep my secret, until the time
+agreed upon for the present general disclosure.&nbsp; Agitated by
+a multitude of curious thoughts, I retired to my room, that
+night, prepared to encounter some new experience of a spectral
+character.&nbsp; Nor was my preparation needless, for, waking
+from an uneasy sleep at exactly two o&rsquo;clock in the morning,
+what were my feelings to find that I was sharing my bed with the
+skeleton of Master B.!</p>
+<p>I sprang up, and the skeleton sprang up also.&nbsp; I then
+heard a plaintive voice saying, &ldquo;Where am I?&nbsp; What is
+become of me?&rdquo; and, looking hard in that direction,
+perceived the ghost of Master B.</p>
+<p>The young spectre was dressed in an obsolete fashion: or
+rather, was not so much dressed as put into a case of inferior
+pepper-and-salt cloth, made horrible by means of shining
+buttons.&nbsp; I observed that these buttons went, in a double
+row, over each shoulder of the young ghost, and appeared to
+descend his back.&nbsp; He wore a frill round his neck.&nbsp; His
+right hand (which I distinctly noticed to be inky) was laid upon
+his stomach; connecting this action with some feeble pimples on
+his countenance, and his general air of nausea, I concluded this
+ghost to be the ghost of a boy who had habitually taken a great
+deal too much medicine.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where am I?&rdquo; said the little spectre, in a
+pathetic voice.&nbsp; &ldquo;And why was I born in the Calomel
+days, and why did I have all that Calomel given me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I replied, with sincere earnestness, that upon my soul I
+couldn&rsquo;t tell him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where is my little sister,&rdquo; said the ghost,
+&ldquo;and where my angelic little wife, and where is the boy I
+went to school with?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I entreated the phantom to be comforted, and above all things
+to take heart respecting the loss of the boy he went to school
+with.&nbsp; I represented to him that probably that boy never
+did, within human experience, come out well, when
+discovered.&nbsp; I urged that I myself had, in later life,
+turned up several boys whom I went to school with, and none of
+them had at all answered.&nbsp; I expressed my humble belief that
+that boy never did answer.&nbsp; I represented that he was a
+mythic character, a delusion, and a snare.&nbsp; I recounted how,
+the last time I found him, I found him at a dinner party behind a
+wall of white cravat, with an inconclusive opinion on every
+possible subject, and a power of silent boredom absolutely
+Titanic.&nbsp; I related how, on the strength of our having been
+together at &ldquo;Old Doylance&rsquo;s,&rdquo; he had asked
+himself to breakfast with me (a social offence of the largest
+magnitude); how, fanning my weak embers of belief in
+Doylance&rsquo;s boys, I had let him in; and how, he had proved
+to be a fearful wanderer about the earth, pursuing the race of
+Adam with inexplicable notions concerning the currency, and with
+a proposition that the Bank of England should, on pain of being
+abolished, instantly strike off and circulate, God knows how many
+thousand millions of ten-and-sixpenny notes.</p>
+<p><a name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 137</span>The
+ghost heard me in silence, and with a fixed stare.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Barber!&rdquo; it apostrophised me when I had
+finished.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Barber?&rdquo; I repeated&mdash;for I am not of that
+profession.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Condemned,&rdquo; said the ghost, &ldquo;to shave a
+constant change of customers&mdash;now, me&mdash;now, a young
+man&mdash;now, thyself as thou art&mdash;now, thy
+father&mdash;now, thy grandfather; condemned, too, to lie down
+with a skeleton every night, and to rise with it every
+morning&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>(I shuddered on hearing this dismal announcement.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Barber!&nbsp; Pursue me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I had felt, even before the words were uttered, that I was
+under a spell to pursue the phantom.&nbsp; I immediately did so,
+and was in Master B.&rsquo;s room no longer.</p>
+<p>Most people know what long and fatiguing night journeys had
+been forced upon the witches who used to confess, and who, no
+doubt, told the exact truth&mdash;particularly as they were
+always assisted with leading questions, and the Torture was
+always ready.&nbsp; I asseverate that, during my occupation of
+Master B.&rsquo;s room, I was taken by the ghost that haunted it,
+on expeditions fully as long and wild as any of those.&nbsp;
+Assuredly, I was presented to no shabby old man with a
+goat&rsquo;s horns and tail (something between Pan and an old
+clothesman), holding conventional receptions, as stupid as those
+of real life and less decent; but, I came upon other things which
+appeared to me to have more meaning.</p>
+<p>Confident that I speak the truth and shall be believed, I
+declare without hesitation that I followed the ghost, in the
+first instance on a broom-stick, and afterwards on a
+rocking-horse.&nbsp; The very smell of the animal&rsquo;s
+paint&mdash;especially when I brought it out, by making him
+warm&mdash;I am ready to swear to.&nbsp; I followed the ghost,
+afterwards, in a hackney coach; an institution with the peculiar
+smell of which, the present generation is unacquainted, but to
+which I am again ready to swear as a combination of stable, dog
+with the mange, and very old bellows.&nbsp; (In this, I appeal to
+previous generations to confirm or refute me.)&nbsp; I pursued
+the phantom, on a headless donkey: at least, upon a donkey who
+was so interested in the state of his stomach that his head was
+always down there, investigating it; on ponies, expressly born to
+kick up behind; on roundabouts and swings, from fairs; in the
+first cab&mdash;another forgotten institution where the fare
+regularly got into bed, and was tucked up with the driver.</p>
+<p>Not to trouble you with a detailed account of all my travels
+in pursuit of the ghost of Master B., which were longer and more
+wonderful than those of Sinbad the Sailor, I will confine myself
+to one experience from which you may judge of many.</p>
+<p>I was marvellously changed.&nbsp; I was myself, yet not
+myself.&nbsp; I was conscious of something within me, which has
+been the same all through my life, and which I have always
+recognised under all its phases and varieties as never altering,
+and yet I was not the I who had gone to bed in Master B.&rsquo;s
+room.&nbsp; I had the smoothest of faces and the <a
+name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>shortest of
+legs, and I had taken another creature like myself, also with the
+smoothest of faces and the shortest of legs, behind a door, and
+was confiding to him a proposition of the most astounding
+nature.</p>
+<p>This proposition was, that we should have a Seraglio.</p>
+<p>The other creature assented warmly.&nbsp; He had no notion of
+respectability, neither had I.&nbsp; It was the custom of the
+East, it was the way of the good Caliph Haroun Alraschid (let me
+have the corrupted name again for once, it is so scented with
+sweet memories!), the usage was highly laudable, and most worthy
+of imitation.&nbsp; &ldquo;O, yes!&nbsp; Let us,&rdquo; said the
+other creature with a jump, &ldquo;have a Seraglio.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was not because we entertained the faintest doubts of the
+meritorious character of the Oriental establishment we proposed
+to import, that we perceived it must be kept a secret from Miss
+Griffin.&nbsp; It was because we knew Miss Griffin to be bereft
+of human sympathies, and incapable of appreciating the greatness
+of the great Haroun.&nbsp; Mystery impenetrably shrouded from
+Miss Griffin then, let us entrust it to Miss Bule.</p>
+<p>We were ten in Miss Griffin&rsquo;s establishment by Hampstead
+Ponds; eight ladies and two gentlemen.&nbsp; Miss Bule, whom I
+judge to have attained the ripe age of eight or nine, took the
+lead in society.&nbsp; I opened the subject to her in the course
+of the day, and proposed that she should become the
+Favourite.</p>
+<p>Miss Bule, after struggling with the diffidence so natural to,
+and charming in, her adorable sex, expressed herself as flattered
+by the idea, but wished to know how it was proposed to provide
+for Miss Pipson?&nbsp; Miss Bule&mdash;who was understood to have
+vowed towards that young lady, a friendship, halves, and no
+secrets, until death, on the Church Service and Lessons complete
+in two volumes with case and lock&mdash;Miss Bule said she could
+not, as the friend of Pipson, disguise from herself, or me, that
+Pipson was not one of the common.</p>
+<p>Now, Miss Pipson, having curly hair and blue eyes (which was
+my idea of anything mortal and feminine that was called Fair), I
+promptly replied that I regarded Miss Pipson in the light of a
+Fair Circassian.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And what then?&rdquo; Miss Bule pensively asked.</p>
+<p>I replied that she must be inveigled by a Merchant, brought to
+me veiled, and purchased as a slave.</p>
+<p>[The other creature had already fallen into the second male
+place in the State, and was set apart for Grand Vizier.&nbsp; He
+afterwards resisted this disposal of events, but had his hair
+pulled until he yielded.]</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shall I not be jealous?&rdquo; Miss Bule inquired,
+casting down her eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Zobeide, no,&rdquo; I replied; &ldquo;you will ever be
+the favourite Sultana; the first place in my heart, and on my
+throne, will be ever yours.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>Miss
+Bule, upon that assurance, consented to propound the idea to her
+seven beautiful companions.&nbsp; It occurring to me, in the
+course of the same day, that we knew we could trust a grinning
+and good-natured soul called Tabby, who was the serving drudge of
+the house, and had no more figure than one of the beds, and upon
+whose face there was always more or less black-lead, I slipped
+into Miss Bule&rsquo;s hand after supper, a little note to that
+effect; dwelling on the black-lead as being in a manner deposited
+by the finger of Providence, pointing Tabby out for Mesrour, the
+celebrated chief of the Blacks of the Hareem.</p>
+<p>There were difficulties in the formation of the desired
+institution, as there are in all combinations.&nbsp; The other
+creature showed himself of a low character, and, when defeated in
+aspiring to the throne, pretended to have conscientious scruples
+about prostrating himself before the Caliph; wouldn&rsquo;t call
+him Commander of the Faithful; spoke of him slightingly and
+inconsistently as a mere &ldquo;chap;&rdquo; said he, the other
+creature, &ldquo;wouldn&rsquo;t play&rdquo;&mdash;Play!&mdash;and
+was otherwise coarse and offensive.&nbsp; This meanness of
+disposition was, however, put down by the general indignation of
+an united Seraglio, and I became blessed in the smiles of eight
+of the fairest of the daughters of men.</p>
+<p>The smiles could only be bestowed when Miss Griffin was
+looking another way, and only then in a very wary manner, for
+there was a legend among the followers of the Prophet that she
+saw with a little round ornament in the middle of the pattern on
+the back of her shawl.&nbsp; But every day after dinner, for an
+hour, we were all together, and then the Favourite and the rest
+of the Royal Hareem competed who should most beguile the leisure
+of the Serene Haroun reposing from the cares of State&mdash;which
+were generally, as in most affairs of State, of an arithmetical
+character, the Commander of the Faithful being a fearful boggler
+at a sum.</p>
+<p>On these occasions, the devoted Mesrour, chief of the Blacks
+of the Hareem, was always in attendance (Miss Griffin usually
+ringing for that officer, at the same time, with great
+vehemence), but never acquitted himself in a manner worthy of his
+historical reputation.&nbsp; In the first place, his bringing a
+broom into the Divan of the Caliph, even when Haroun wore on his
+shoulders the red robe of anger (Miss Pipson&rsquo;s pelisse),
+though it might be got over for the moment, was never to be quite
+satisfactorily accounted for.&nbsp; In the second place, his
+breaking out into grinning exclamations of &ldquo;Lork you
+pretties!&rdquo; was neither Eastern nor respectful.&nbsp; In the
+third place, when specially instructed to say
+&ldquo;Bismillah!&rdquo; he always said
+&ldquo;Hallelujah!&rdquo;&nbsp; This officer, unlike his class,
+was too good-humoured altogether, kept his mouth open far too
+wide, expressed approbation to an incongruous extent, and even
+once&mdash;it was on the occasion of the purchase of the Fair
+Circassian for five hundred thousand purses of gold, and cheap,
+too&mdash;embraced the Slave, the Favourite, and the Caliph, all
+round.&nbsp; <a name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+140</span>(Parenthetically let me say God bless Mesrour, and may
+there have been sons and daughters on that tender bosom,
+softening many a hard day since!)</p>
+<p>Miss Griffin was a model of propriety, and I am at a loss to
+imagine what the feelings of the virtuous woman would have been,
+if she had known, when she paraded us down the Hampstead Road two
+and two, that she was walking with a stately step at the head of
+Polygamy and Mahomedanism.&nbsp; I believe that a mysterious and
+terrible joy with which the contemplation of Miss Griffin, in
+this unconscious state, inspired us, and a grim sense prevalent
+among us that there was a dreadful power in our knowledge of what
+Miss Griffin (who knew all things that could be learnt out of
+book) didn&rsquo;t know, were the main-spring of the preservation
+of our secret.&nbsp; It was wonderfully kept, but was once upon
+the verge of self-betrayal.&nbsp; The danger and escape occurred
+upon a Sunday.&nbsp; We were all ten ranged in a conspicuous part
+of the gallery at church, with Miss Griffin at our head&mdash;as
+we were every Sunday&mdash;advertising the establishment in an
+unsecular sort of way&mdash;when the description of Solomon in
+his domestic glory happened to be read.&nbsp; The moment that
+monarch was thus referred to, conscience whispered me,
+&ldquo;Thou, too, Haroun!&rdquo;&nbsp; The officiating minister
+had a cast in his eye, and it assisted conscience by giving him
+the appearance of reading personally at me.&nbsp; A crimson
+blush, attended by a fearful perspiration, suffused my
+features.&nbsp; The Grand Vizier became more dead than alive, and
+the whole Seraglio reddened as if the sunset of Bagdad shone
+direct upon their lovely faces.&nbsp; At this portentous time the
+awful Griffin rose, and balefully surveyed the children of
+Islam.&nbsp; My own impression was, that Church and State had
+entered into a conspiracy with Miss Griffin to expose us, and
+that we should all be put into white sheets, and exhibited in the
+centre aisle.&nbsp; But, so Westerly&mdash;if I may be allowed
+the expression as opposite to Eastern associations&mdash;was Miss
+Griffin&rsquo;s sense of rectitude, that she merely suspected
+Apples, and we were saved.</p>
+<p>I have called the Seraglio, united.&nbsp; Upon the question,
+solely, whether the Commander of the Faithful durst exercise a
+right of kissing in that sanctuary of the palace, were its
+peerless inmates divided.&nbsp; Zobeide asserted a counter-right
+in the Favourite to scratch, and the fair Circassian put her
+face, for refuge, into a green baize bag, originally designed for
+books.&nbsp; On the other hand, a young antelope of transcendent
+beauty from the fruitful plains of Camden Town (whence she had
+been brought, by traders, in the half-yearly caravan that crossed
+the intermediate desert after the holidays), held more liberal
+opinions, but stipulated for limiting the benefit of them to that
+dog, and son of a dog, the Grand Vizier&mdash;who had no rights,
+and was not in question.&nbsp; At length, the difficulty was
+compromised by the installation of a very youthful slave as
+Deputy.&nbsp; She, raised upon a stool, officially received upon
+her cheeks the salutes intended by the <a
+name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 141</span>gracious
+Haroun for other Sultanas, and was privately rewarded from the
+coffers of the Ladies of the Hareem.</p>
+<p>And now it was, at the full height of enjoyment of my bliss,
+that I became heavily troubled.&nbsp; I began to think of my
+mother, and what she would say to my taking home at Midsummer
+eight of the most beautiful of the daughters of men, but all
+unexpected.&nbsp; I thought of the number of beds we made up at
+our house, of my father&rsquo;s income, and of the baker, and my
+despondency redoubled.&nbsp; The Seraglio and malicious Vizier,
+divining the cause of their Lord&rsquo;s unhappiness, did their
+utmost to augment it.&nbsp; They professed unbounded fidelity,
+and declared that they would live and die with him.&nbsp; Reduced
+to the utmost wretchedness by these protestations of attachment,
+I lay awake, for hours at a time, ruminating on my frightful
+lot.&nbsp; In my despair, I think I might have taken an early
+opportunity of falling on my knees before Miss Griffin, avowing
+my resemblance to Solomon, and praying to be dealt with according
+to the outraged laws of my country, if an unthought-of means of
+escape had not opened before me.</p>
+<p>One day, we were out walking, two and two&mdash;on which
+occasion the Vizier had his usual instructions to take note of
+the boy at the turnpike, and if he profanely gazed (which he
+always did) at the beauties of the Hareem, to have him bowstrung
+in the course of the night&mdash;and it happened that our hearts
+were veiled in gloom.&nbsp; An unaccountable action on the part
+of the antelope had plunged the State into disgrace.&nbsp; That
+charmer, on the representation that the previous day was her
+birthday, and that vast treasures had been sent in a hamper for
+its celebration (both baseless assertions), had secretly but most
+pressingly invited thirty-five neighbouring princes and
+princesses to a ball and supper: with a special stipulation that
+they were &ldquo;not to be fetched till twelve.&rdquo;&nbsp; This
+wandering of the antelope&rsquo;s fancy, led to the surprising
+arrival at Miss Griffin&rsquo;s door, in divers equipages and
+under various escorts, of a great company in full dress, who were
+deposited on the top step in a flush of high expectancy, and who
+were dismissed in tears.&nbsp; At the beginning of the double
+knocks attendant on these ceremonies, the antelope had retired to
+a back attic, and bolted herself in; and at every new arrival,
+Miss Griffin had gone so much more and more distracted, that at
+last she had been seen to tear her front.&nbsp; Ultimate
+capitulation on the part of the offender, had been followed by
+solitude in the linen-closet, bread and water and a lecture to
+all, of vindictive length, in which Miss Griffin had used
+expressions: Firstly, &ldquo;I believe you all of you knew of
+it;&rdquo; Secondly, &ldquo;Every one of you is as wicked as
+another;&rdquo; Thirdly, &ldquo;A pack of little
+wretches.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Under these circumstances, we were walking drearily along; and
+I especially, with my Moosulmaun responsibilities heavy on me,
+was in a very low state of mind; when a strange man accosted Miss
+Griffin, and, after walking on at her side for a little while and
+talking with her, looked at me.&nbsp; Supposing him to be a
+minion of the law, and that <a name="page142"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 142</span>my hour was come, I instantly ran
+away, with the general purpose of making for Egypt.</p>
+<p>The whole Seraglio cried out, when they saw me making off as
+fast as my legs would carry me (I had an impression that the
+first turning on the left, and round by the public-house, would
+be the shortest way to the Pyramids), Miss Griffin screamed after
+me, the faithless Vizier ran after me, and the boy at the
+turnpike dodged me into a corner, like a sheep, and cut me
+off.&nbsp; Nobody scolded me when I was taken and brought back;
+Miss Griffin only said, with a stunning gentleness, This was very
+curious!&nbsp; Why had I run away when the gentleman looked at
+me?</p>
+<p>If I had had any breath to answer with, I dare say I should
+have made no answer; having no breath, I certainly made
+none.&nbsp; Miss Griffin and the strange man took me between
+them, and walked me back to the palace in a sort of state; but
+not at all (as I couldn&rsquo;t help feeling, with astonishment)
+in culprit state.</p>
+<p>When we got there, we went into a room by ourselves, and Miss
+Griffin called in to her assistance, Mesrour, chief of the dusky
+guards of the Hareem.&nbsp; Mesrour, on being whispered to, began
+to shed tears.&nbsp; &ldquo;Bless you, my precious!&rdquo; said
+that officer, turning to me; &ldquo;your Pa&rsquo;s took bitter
+bad!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I asked, with a fluttered heart, &ldquo;Is he very
+ill?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Lord temper the wind to you, my lamb!&rdquo; said the
+good Mesrour, kneeling down, that I might have a comforting
+shoulder for my head to rest on, &ldquo;your Pa&rsquo;s
+dead!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Haroun Alraschid took to flight at the words; the Seraglio
+vanished; from that moment, I never again saw one of the eight of
+the fairest of the daughters of men.</p>
+<p>I was taken home, and there was Debt at home as well as Death,
+and we had a sale there.&nbsp; My own little bed was so
+superciliously looked upon by a Power unknown to me, hazily
+called &ldquo;The Trade,&rdquo; that a brass coal-scuttle, a
+roasting-jack, and a birdcage, were obliged to be put into it to
+make a Lot of it, and then it went for a song.&nbsp; So I heard
+mentioned, and I wondered what song, and thought what a dismal
+song it must have been to sing!</p>
+<p>Then, I was sent to a great, cold, bare, school of big boys;
+where everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy, without
+being enough; where everybody, large and small, was cruel; where
+the boys knew all about the sale, before I got there, and asked
+me what I had fetched, and who had bought me, and hooted at me,
+&ldquo;Going, going, gone!&rdquo;&nbsp; I never whispered in that
+wretched place that I had been Haroun, or had had a Seraglio:
+for, I knew that if I mentioned my reverses, I should be so
+worried, that I should have to drown myself in the muddy pond
+near the playground, which looked like the beer.</p>
+<p>Ah me, ah me!&nbsp; No other ghost has haunted the boy&rsquo;s
+room, my friends, since I have occupied it, than the ghost of my
+own childhood, the ghost of my own innocence, the ghost of my own
+airy belief.&nbsp; <a name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+143</span>Many a time have I pursued the phantom: never with this
+man&rsquo;s stride of mine to come up with it, never with these
+man&rsquo;s hands of mine to touch it, never more to this
+man&rsquo;s heart of mine to hold it in its purity.&nbsp; And
+here you see me working out, as cheerfully and thankfully as I
+may, my doom of shaving in the glass a constant change of
+customers, and of lying down and rising up with the skeleton
+allotted to me for my mortal companion.</p>
+<h2><a name="page303"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 303</span>THE
+TRIAL FOR MURDER. <a name="citation303"></a><a
+href="#footnote303" class="citation">[303]</a></h2>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">have</span> always noticed a prevalent
+want of courage, even among persons of superior intelligence and
+culture, as to imparting their own psychological experiences when
+those have been of a strange sort.&nbsp; Almost all men are
+afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no
+parallel or response in a listener&rsquo;s internal life, and
+might be suspected or laughed at.&nbsp; A truthful traveller, who
+should have seen some extraordinary creature in the likeness of a
+sea-serpent, would have no fear of mentioning it; but the same
+traveller, having had some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary
+of thought, vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable mental
+impression, would hesitate considerably before he would own to
+it.&nbsp; To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in
+which such subjects are involved.&nbsp; We do not habitually
+communicate our experiences of these subjective things as we do
+our experiences of objective creation.&nbsp; The consequence is,
+that the general stock of experience in this regard appears
+exceptional, and really is so, in respect of being miserably
+imperfect.</p>
+<p>In what I am going to relate, I have no intention of setting
+up, opposing, or supporting, any theory whatever.&nbsp; I know
+the history of the Bookseller of Berlin, I have studied the case
+of the wife of a late Astronomer Royal as related by Sir David
+Brewster, and I have followed the minutest details of a much more
+remarkable case of Spectral Illusion occurring within my private
+circle of friends.&nbsp; It may be necessary to state as to this
+last, that the sufferer (a lady) was in no degree, however
+distant, related to me.&nbsp; A mistaken assumption on that head
+might suggest an explanation of a part of my own case,&mdash;<a
+name="page304"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 304</span>but only a
+part,&mdash;which would be wholly without foundation.&nbsp; It
+cannot be referred to my inheritance of any developed
+peculiarity, nor had I ever before any at all similar experience,
+nor have I ever had any at all similar experience since.</p>
+<p>It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, a certain
+murder was committed in England, which attracted great
+attention.&nbsp; We hear more than enough of murderers as they
+rise in succession to their atrocious eminence, and I would bury
+the memory of this particular brute, if I could, as his body was
+buried, in Newgate Jail.&nbsp; I purposely abstain from giving
+any direct clue to the criminal&rsquo;s individuality.</p>
+<p>When the murder was first discovered, no suspicion
+fell&mdash;or I ought rather to say, for I cannot be too precise
+in my facts, it was nowhere publicly hinted that any suspicion
+fell&mdash;on the man who was afterwards brought to trial.&nbsp;
+As no reference was at that time made to him in the newspapers,
+it is obviously impossible that any description of him can at
+that time have been given in the newspapers.&nbsp; It is
+essential that this fact be remembered.</p>
+<p>Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing the
+account of that first discovery, I found it to be deeply
+interesting, and I read it with close attention.&nbsp; I read it
+twice, if not three times.&nbsp; The discovery had been made in a
+bedroom, and, when I laid down the paper, I was aware of a
+flash&mdash;rush&mdash;flow&mdash;I do not know what to call
+it,&mdash;no word I can find is satisfactorily
+descriptive,&mdash;in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing
+through my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running
+river.&nbsp; Though almost instantaneous in its passing, it was
+perfectly clear; so clear that I distinctly, and with a sense of
+relief, observed the absence of the dead body from the bed.</p>
+<p>It was in no romantic place that I had this curious sensation,
+but in chambers in Piccadilly, very near to the corner of St.
+James&rsquo;s Street.&nbsp; It was entirely new to me.&nbsp; I
+was in my easy-chair at the moment, and the sensation was
+accompanied with a peculiar shiver which started the chair from
+its position.&nbsp; (But it is to be noted that the chair ran
+easily on castors.)&nbsp; I went to one of the windows (there are
+two in the room, and the room is on the second floor) to refresh
+my eyes with the moving objects down in Piccadilly.&nbsp; It was
+a bright autumn morning, and the street was sparkling and
+cheerful.&nbsp; The wind was high.&nbsp; As I looked out, it
+brought down from the Park a quantity of fallen leaves, which a
+gust took, and whirled into a spiral pillar.&nbsp; As the pillar
+fell and the leaves dispersed, I saw two men on the opposite side
+of the way, going from West to East.&nbsp; They were one behind
+the other.&nbsp; The foremost man often looked back over his
+shoulder.&nbsp; The second man followed him, at a distance of
+some thirty paces, with his right hand menacingly raised.&nbsp;
+First, the singularity and steadiness of this threatening gesture
+in so public a thoroughfare attracted my attention; and next, the
+more remarkable circumstance that nobody heeded it.&nbsp; Both
+men threaded their way among the <a name="page305"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 305</span>other passengers with a smoothness
+hardly consistent even with the action of walking on a pavement;
+and no single creature, that I could see, gave them place,
+touched them, or looked after them.&nbsp; In passing before my
+windows, they both stared up at me.&nbsp; I saw their two faces
+very distinctly, and I knew that I could recognise them
+anywhere.&nbsp; Not that I had consciously noticed anything very
+remarkable in either face, except that the man who went first had
+an unusually lowering appearance, and that the face of the man
+who followed him was of the colour of impure wax.</p>
+<p>I am a bachelor, and my valet and his wife constitute my whole
+establishment.&nbsp; My occupation is in a certain Branch Bank,
+and I wish that my duties as head of a Department were as light
+as they are popularly supposed to be.&nbsp; They kept me in town
+that autumn, when I stood in need of change.&nbsp; I was not ill,
+but I was not well.&nbsp; My reader is to make the most that can
+be reasonably made of my feeling jaded, having a depressing sense
+upon me of a monotonous life, and being &ldquo;slightly
+dyspeptic.&rdquo;&nbsp; I am assured by my renowned doctor that
+my real state of health at that time justifies no stronger
+description, and I quote his own from his written answer to my
+request for it.</p>
+<p>As the circumstances of the murder, gradually unravelling,
+took stronger and stronger possession of the public mind, I kept
+them away from mine by knowing as little about them as was
+possible in the midst of the universal excitement.&nbsp; But I
+knew that a verdict of Wilful Murder had been found against the
+suspected murderer, and that he had been committed to Newgate for
+trial.&nbsp; I also knew that his trial had been postponed over
+one Sessions of the Central Criminal Court, on the ground of
+general prejudice and want of time for the preparation of the
+defence.&nbsp; I may further have known, but I believe I did not,
+when, or about when, the Sessions to which his trial stood
+postponed would come on.</p>
+<p>My sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room, are all on one
+floor.&nbsp; With the last there is no communication but through
+the bedroom.&nbsp; True, there is a door in it, once
+communicating with the staircase; but a part of the fitting of my
+bath has been&mdash;and had then been for some years&mdash;fixed
+across it.&nbsp; At the same period, and as a part of the same
+arrangement,&mdash;the door had been nailed up and canvased
+over.</p>
+<p>I was standing in my bedroom late one night, giving some
+directions to my servant before he went to bed.&nbsp; My face was
+towards the only available door of communication with the
+dressing-room, and it was closed.&nbsp; My servant&rsquo;s back
+was towards that door.&nbsp; While I was speaking to him, I saw
+it open, and a man look in, who very earnestly and mysteriously
+beckoned to me.&nbsp; That man was the man who had gone second of
+the two along Piccadilly, and whose face was of the colour of
+impure wax.</p>
+<p>The figure, having beckoned, drew back, and closed the
+door.&nbsp; With no longer pause than was made by my crossing the
+bedroom, I <a name="page306"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+306</span>opened the dressing-room door, and looked in.&nbsp; I
+had a lighted candle already in my hand.&nbsp; I felt no inward
+expectation of seeing the figure in the dressing-room, and I did
+not see it there.</p>
+<p>Conscious that my servant stood amazed, I turned round to him,
+and said: &ldquo;Derrick, could you believe that in my cool
+senses I fancied I saw a &mdash;&rdquo;&nbsp; As I there laid my
+hand upon his breast, with a sudden start he trembled violently,
+and said, &ldquo;O Lord, yes, sir!&nbsp; A dead man
+beckoning!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Now I do not believe that this John Derrick, my trusty and
+attached servant for more than twenty years, had any impression
+whatever of having seen any such figure, until I touched
+him.&nbsp; The change in him was so startling, when I touched
+him, that I fully believe he derived his impression in some
+occult manner from me at that instant.</p>
+<p>I bade John Derrick bring some brandy, and I gave him a dram,
+and was glad to take one myself.&nbsp; Of what had preceded that
+night&rsquo;s phenomenon, I told him not a single word.&nbsp;
+Reflecting on it, I was absolutely certain that I had never seen
+that face before, except on the one occasion in Piccadilly.&nbsp;
+Comparing its expression when beckoning at the door with its
+expression when it had stared up at me as I stood at my window, I
+came to the conclusion that on the first occasion it had sought
+to fasten itself upon my memory, and that on the second occasion
+it had made sure of being immediately remembered.</p>
+<p>I was not very comfortable that night, though I felt a
+certainty, difficult to explain, that the figure would not
+return.&nbsp; At daylight I fell into a heavy sleep, from which I
+was awakened by John Derrick&rsquo;s coming to my bedside with a
+paper in his hand.</p>
+<p>This paper, it appeared, had been the subject of an
+altercation at the door between its bearer and my servant.&nbsp;
+It was a summons to me to serve upon a Jury at the forthcoming
+Sessions of the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey.&nbsp; I
+had never before been summoned on such a Jury, as John Derrick
+well knew.&nbsp; He believed&mdash;I am not certain at this hour
+whether with reason or otherwise&mdash;that that class of Jurors
+were customarily chosen on a lower qualification than mine, and
+he had at first refused to accept the summons.&nbsp; The man who
+served it had taken the matter very coolly.&nbsp; He had said
+that my attendance or non-attendance was nothing to him; there
+the summons was; and I should deal with it at my own peril, and
+not at his.</p>
+<p>For a day or two I was undecided whether to respond to this
+call, or take no notice of it.&nbsp; I was not conscious of the
+slightest mysterious bias, influence, or attraction, one way or
+other.&nbsp; Of that I am as strictly sure as of every other
+statement that I make here.&nbsp; Ultimately I decided, as a
+break in the monotony of my life, that I would go.</p>
+<p>The appointed morning was a raw morning in the month of
+November.&nbsp; There was a dense brown fog in Piccadilly, and it
+became positively black and in the last degree oppressive East of
+Temple Bar.&nbsp; I found the passages and staircases of the
+Court-House <a name="page307"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+307</span>flaringly lighted with gas, and the Court itself
+similarly illuminated.&nbsp; I <i>think</i> that, until I was
+conducted by officers into the Old Court and saw its crowded
+state, I did not know that the Murderer was to be tried that
+day.&nbsp; I <i>think</i> that, until I was so helped into the
+Old Court with considerable difficulty, I did not know into which
+of the two Courts sitting my summons would take me.&nbsp; But
+this must not be received as a positive assertion, for I am not
+completely satisfied in my mind on either point.</p>
+<p>I took my seat in the place appropriated to Jurors in waiting,
+and I looked about the Court as well as I could through the cloud
+of fog and breath that was heavy in it.&nbsp; I noticed the black
+vapour hanging like a murky curtain outside the great windows,
+and I noticed the stifled sound of wheels on the straw or tan
+that was littered in the street; also, the hum of the people
+gathered there, which a shrill whistle, or a louder song or hail
+than the rest, occasionally pierced.&nbsp; Soon afterwards the
+Judges, two in number, entered, and took their seats.&nbsp; The
+buzz in the Court was awfully hushed.&nbsp; The direction was
+given to put the Murderer to the bar.&nbsp; He appeared
+there.&nbsp; And in that same instant I recognised in him the
+first of the two men who had gone down Piccadilly.</p>
+<p>If my name had been called then, I doubt if I could have
+answered to it audibly.&nbsp; But it was called about sixth or
+eighth in the panel, and I was by that time able to say,
+&ldquo;Here!&rdquo;&nbsp; Now, observe.&nbsp; As I stepped into
+the box, the prisoner, who had been looking on attentively, but
+with no sign of concern, became violently agitated, and beckoned
+to his attorney.&nbsp; The prisoner&rsquo;s wish to challenge me
+was so manifest, that it occasioned a pause, during which the
+attorney, with his hand upon the dock, whispered with his client,
+and shook his head.&nbsp; I afterwards had it from that
+gentleman, that the prisoner&rsquo;s first affrighted words to
+him were, &ldquo;<i>At all hazards</i>, <i>challenge that
+man</i>!&rdquo;&nbsp; But that, as he would give no reason for
+it, and admitted that he had not even known my name until he
+heard it called and I appeared, it was not done.</p>
+<p>Both on the ground already explained, that I wish to avoid
+reviving the unwholesome memory of that Murderer, and also
+because a detailed account of his long trial is by no means
+indispensable to my narrative, I shall confine myself closely to
+such incidents in the ten days and nights during which we, the
+Jury, were kept together, as directly bear on my own curious
+personal experience.&nbsp; It is in that, and not in the
+Murderer, that I seek to interest my reader.&nbsp; It is to that,
+and not to a page of the Newgate Calendar, that I beg
+attention.</p>
+<p>I was chosen Foreman of the Jury.&nbsp; On the second morning
+of the trial, after evidence had been taken for two hours (I
+heard the church clocks strike), happening to cast my eyes over
+my brother jurymen, I found an inexplicable difficulty in
+counting them.&nbsp; I counted them several times, yet always
+with the same difficulty.&nbsp; In short, I made them one too
+many.</p>
+<p><a name="page308"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 308</span>I
+touched the brother jurymen whose place was next me, and I
+whispered to him, &ldquo;Oblige me by counting us.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He looked surprised by the request, but turned his head and
+counted. &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; says he, suddenly, &ldquo;we are
+Thirt&mdash;; but no, it&rsquo;s not possible.&nbsp; No.&nbsp; We
+are twelve.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>According to my counting that day, we were always right in
+detail, but in the gross we were always one too many.&nbsp; There
+was no appearance&mdash;no figure&mdash;to account for it; but I
+had now an inward foreshadowing of the figure that was surely
+coming.</p>
+<p>The Jury were housed at the London Tavern.&nbsp; We all slept
+in one large room on separate tables, and we were constantly in
+the charge and under the eye of the officer sworn to hold us in
+safe-keeping.&nbsp; I see no reason for suppressing the real name
+of that officer.&nbsp; He was intelligent, highly polite, and
+obliging, and (I was glad to hear) much respected in the
+City.&nbsp; He had an agreeable presence, good eyes, enviable
+black whiskers, and a fine sonorous voice.&nbsp; His name was Mr.
+Harker.</p>
+<p>When we turned into our twelve beds at night, Mr.
+Harker&rsquo;s bed was drawn across the door.&nbsp; On the night
+of the second day, not being disposed to lie down, and seeing Mr.
+Harker sitting on his bed, I went and sat beside him, and offered
+him a pinch of snuff.&nbsp; As Mr. Harker&rsquo;s hand touched
+mine in taking it from my box, a peculiar shiver crossed him, and
+he said, &ldquo;Who is this?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Following Mr. Harker&rsquo;s eyes, and looking along the room,
+I saw again the figure I expected,&mdash;the second of the two
+men who had gone down Piccadilly.&nbsp; I rose, and advanced a
+few steps; then stopped, and looked round at Mr. Harker.&nbsp; He
+was quite unconcerned, laughed, and said in a pleasant way,
+&ldquo;I thought for a moment we had a thirteenth juryman,
+without a bed.&nbsp; But I see it is the moonlight.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Making no revelation to Mr. Harker, but inviting him to take a
+walk with me to the end of the room, I watched what the figure
+did.&nbsp; It stood for a few moments by the bedside of each of
+my eleven brother jurymen, close to the pillow.&nbsp; It always
+went to the right-hand side of the bed, and always passed out
+crossing the foot of the next bed.&nbsp; It seemed, from the
+action of the head, merely to look down pensively at each
+recumbent figure.&nbsp; It took no notice of me, or of my bed,
+which was that nearest to Mr. Harker&rsquo;s.&nbsp; It seemed to
+go out where the moonlight came in, through a high window, as by
+an a&euml;rial flight of stairs.</p>
+<p>Next morning at breakfast, it appeared that everybody present
+had dreamed of the murdered man last night, except myself and Mr.
+Harker.</p>
+<p>I now felt as convinced that the second man who had gone down
+Piccadilly was the murdered man (so to speak), as if it had been
+borne into my comprehension by his immediate testimony.&nbsp; But
+even this took place, and in a manner for which I was not at all
+prepared.</p>
+<p>On the fifth day of the trial, when the case for the
+prosecution was <a name="page309"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+309</span>drawing to a close, a miniature of the murdered man,
+missing from his bedroom upon the discovery of the deed, and
+afterwards found in a hiding-place where the Murderer had been
+seen digging, was put in evidence.&nbsp; Having been identified
+by the witness under examination, it was handed up to the Bench,
+and thence handed down to be inspected by the Jury.&nbsp; As an
+officer in a black gown was making his way with it across to me,
+the figure of the second man who had gone down Piccadilly
+impetuously started from the crowd, caught the miniature from the
+officer, and gave it to me with his own hands, at the same time
+saying, in a low and hollow tone,&mdash;before I saw the
+miniature, which was in a locket,&mdash;&ldquo;<i>I was younger
+then</i>, <i>and my face was not then drained of
+blood</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; It also came between me and the brother
+juryman to whom I would have given the miniature, and between him
+and the brother juryman to whom he would have given it, and so
+passed it on through the whole of our number, and back into my
+possession.&nbsp; Not one of them, however, detected this.</p>
+<p>At table, and generally when we were shut up together in Mr.
+Harker&rsquo;s custody, we had from the first naturally discussed
+the day&rsquo;s proceedings a good deal.&nbsp; On that fifth day,
+the case for the prosecution being closed, and we having that
+side of the question in a completed shape before us, our
+discussion was more animated and serious.&nbsp; Among our number
+was a vestryman,&mdash;the densest idiot I have ever seen at
+large,&mdash;who met the plainest evidence with the most
+preposterous objections, and who was sided with by two flabby
+parochial parasites; all the three impanelled from a district so
+delivered over to Fever that they ought to have been upon their
+own trial for five hundred Murders.&nbsp; When these mischievous
+blockheads were at their loudest, which was towards midnight,
+while some of us were already preparing for bed, I again saw the
+murdered man.&nbsp; He stood grimly behind them, beckoning to
+me.&nbsp; On my going towards them, and striking into the
+conversation, he immediately retired.&nbsp; This was the
+beginning of a separate series of appearances, confined to that
+long room in which we were confined.&nbsp; Whenever a knot of my
+brother jurymen laid their heads together, I saw the head of the
+murdered man among theirs.&nbsp; Whenever their comparison of
+notes was going against him, he would solemnly and irresistibly
+beckon to me.</p>
+<p>It will be borne in mind that down to the production of the
+miniature, on the fifth day of the trial, I had never seen the
+Appearance in Court.&nbsp; Three changes occurred now that we
+entered on the case for the defence.&nbsp; Two of them I will
+mention together, first.&nbsp; The figure was now in Court
+continually, and it never there addressed itself to me, but
+always to the person who was speaking at the time.&nbsp; For
+instance: the throat of the murdered man had been cut straight
+across.&nbsp; In the opening speech for the defence, it was
+suggested that the deceased might have cut his own throat.&nbsp;
+At that very moment, the figure, with its throat in the dreadful
+condition <a name="page310"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+310</span>referred to (this it had concealed before), stood at
+the speaker&rsquo;s elbow, motioning across and across its
+windpipe, now with the right hand, now with the left, vigorously
+suggesting to the speaker himself the impossibility of such a
+wound having been self-inflicted by either hand.&nbsp; For
+another instance: a witness to character, a woman, deposed to the
+prisoner&rsquo;s being the most amiable of mankind.&nbsp; The
+figure at that instant stood on the floor before her, looking her
+full in the face, and pointing out the prisoner&rsquo;s evil
+countenance with an extended arm and an outstretched finger.</p>
+<p>The third change now to be added impressed me strongly as the
+most marked and striking of all.&nbsp; I do not theorise upon it;
+I accurately state it, and there leave it.&nbsp; Although the
+Appearance was not itself perceived by those whom it addressed,
+its coming close to such persons was invariably attended by some
+trepidation or disturbance on their part.&nbsp; It seemed to me
+as if it were prevented, by laws to which I was not amenable,
+from fully revealing itself to others, and yet as if it could
+invisibly, dumbly, and darkly overshadow their minds.&nbsp; When
+the leading counsel for the defence suggested that hypothesis of
+suicide, and the figure stood at the learned gentleman&rsquo;s
+elbow, frightfully sawing at its severed throat, it is undeniable
+that the counsel faltered in his speech, lost for a few seconds
+the thread of his ingenious discourse, wiped his forehead with
+his handkerchief, and turned extremely pale.&nbsp; When the
+witness to character was confronted by the Appearance, her eyes
+most certainly did follow the direction of its pointed finger,
+and rest in great hesitation and trouble upon the
+prisoner&rsquo;s face.&nbsp; Two additional illustrations will
+suffice.&nbsp; On the eighth day of the trial, after the pause
+which was every day made early in the afternoon for a few
+minutes&rsquo; rest and refreshment, I came back into Court with
+the rest of the Jury some little time before the return of the
+Judges.&nbsp; Standing up in the box and looking about me, I
+thought the figure was not there, until, chancing to raise my
+eyes to the gallery, I saw it bending forward, and leaning over a
+very decent woman, as if to assure itself whether the Judges had
+resumed their seats or not.&nbsp; Immediately afterwards that
+woman screamed, fainted, and was carried out.&nbsp; So with the
+venerable, sagacious, and patient Judge who conducted the
+trial.&nbsp; When the case was over, and he settled himself and
+his papers to sum up, the murdered man, entering by the
+Judges&rsquo; door, advanced to his Lordship&rsquo;s desk, and
+looked eagerly over his shoulder at the pages of his notes which
+he was turning.&nbsp; A change came over his Lordship&rsquo;s
+face; his hand stopped; the peculiar shiver, that I knew so well,
+passed over him; he faltered, &ldquo;Excuse me, gentlemen, for a
+few moments.&nbsp; I am somewhat oppressed by the vitiated
+air;&rdquo; and did not recover until he had drunk a glass of
+water.</p>
+<p>Through all the monotony of six of those interminable ten
+days,&mdash;the same Judges and others on the bench, the same
+Murderer in the dock, the same lawyers at the table, the same
+tones of question and <a name="page311"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 311</span>answer rising to the roof of the
+court, the same scratching of the Judge&rsquo;s pen, the same
+ushers going in and out, the same lights kindled at the same hour
+when there had been any natural light of day, the same foggy
+curtain outside the great windows when it was foggy, the same
+rain pattering and dripping when it was rainy, the same footmarks
+of turnkeys and prisoner day after day on the same sawdust, the
+same keys locking and unlocking the same heavy
+doors,&mdash;through all the wearisome monotony which made me
+feel as if I had been Foreman of the Jury for a vast period of
+time, and Piccadilly had flourished coevally with Babylon, the
+murdered man never lost one trace of his distinctness in my eyes,
+nor was he at any moment less distinct than anybody else.&nbsp; I
+must not omit, as a matter of fact, that I never once saw the
+Appearance which I call by the name of the murdered man look at
+the Murderer.&nbsp; Again and again I wondered, &ldquo;Why does
+he not?&rdquo;&nbsp; But he never did.</p>
+<p>Nor did he look at me, after the production of the miniature,
+until the last closing minutes of the trial arrived.&nbsp; We
+retired to consider, at seven minutes before ten at night.&nbsp;
+The idiotic vestryman and his two parochial parasites gave us so
+much trouble that we twice returned into Court to beg to have
+certain extracts from the Judge&rsquo;s notes re-read.&nbsp; Nine
+of us had not the smallest doubt about those passages, neither, I
+believe, had any one in the Court; the dunder-headed triumvirate,
+having no idea but obstruction, disputed them for that very
+reason.&nbsp; At length we prevailed, and finally the Jury
+returned into Court at ten minutes past twelve.</p>
+<p>The murdered man at that time stood directly opposite the
+Jury-box, on the other side of the Court.&nbsp; As I took my
+place, his eyes rested on me with great attention; he seemed
+satisfied, and slowly shook a great gray veil, which he carried
+on his arm for the first time, over his head and whole
+form.&nbsp; As I gave in our verdict, &ldquo;Guilty,&rdquo; the
+veil collapsed, all was gone, and his place was empty.</p>
+<p>The Murderer, being asked by the Judge, according to usage,
+whether he had anything to say before sentence of Death should be
+passed upon him, indistinctly muttered something which was
+described in the leading newspapers of the following day as
+&ldquo;a few rambling, incoherent, and half-audible words, in
+which he was understood to complain that he had not had a fair
+trial, because the Foreman of the Jury was prepossessed against
+him.&rdquo;&nbsp; The remarkable declaration that he really made
+was this: &ldquo;<i>My Lord</i>, <i>I knew I was a doomed
+man</i>, <i>when the Foreman of my Jury came into the
+box</i>.&nbsp; <i>My Lord</i>, <i>I knew he would never let me
+off</i>, <i>because</i>, <i>before I was taken</i>, <i>he somehow
+got to my bedside in the night</i>, <i>woke me</i>, <i>and put a
+rope round my neck</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<h2><a name="page312"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 312</span>THE
+SIGNAL-MAN. <a name="citation312"></a><a href="#footnote312"
+class="citation">[312]</a></h2>
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Halloa</span>!&nbsp; Below
+there!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at
+the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its
+short pole.&nbsp; One would have thought, considering the nature
+of the ground, that he could not have doubted from what quarter
+the voice came; but instead of looking up to where I stood on the
+top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself
+about, and looked down the Line.&nbsp; There was something
+remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not have
+said for my life what.&nbsp; But I know it was remarkable enough
+to attract my notice, even though his figure was foreshortened
+and shadowed, down in the deep trench, and mine was high above
+him, so steeped in the glow of an angry sunset, that I had shaded
+my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Halloa!&nbsp; Below!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>From looking down the Line, he turned himself about again,
+and, raising his eyes, saw my figure high above him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to
+you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He looked up at me without replying, and I looked down at him
+without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle
+question.&nbsp; Just then there came a vague vibration in the
+earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an
+oncoming rush that caused me to start back, as though it had
+force to draw me down.&nbsp; When such vapour as rose to my
+height from this rapid train had passed me, and was skimming away
+over the landscape, I looked down again, and saw him refurling
+the flag he had shown while the train went by.</p>
+<p>I repeated my inquiry.&nbsp; After a pause, during which he
+seemed to regard me with fixed attention, he motioned with his
+rolled-up flag towards a point on my level, some two or three
+hundred yards distant.&nbsp; I called down to him, &ldquo;All
+right!&rdquo; and made for that point.&nbsp; There, by dint of
+looking closely about me, I found a rough zigzag descending path
+notched out, which I followed.</p>
+<p>The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually
+precipitate.&nbsp; It was made through a clammy stone, that
+became oozier and wetter as I went down.&nbsp; For these reasons,
+I found the way long enough to give me time to recall a singular
+air of reluctance or compulsion with which he had pointed out the
+path.</p>
+<p>When I came down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him
+again, I saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by
+<a name="page313"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 313</span>which
+the train had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting
+for me to appear.&nbsp; He had his left hand at his chin, and
+that left elbow rested on his right hand, crossed over his
+breast.&nbsp; His attitude was one of such expectation and
+watchfulness that I stopped a moment, wondering at it.</p>
+<p>I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon the level of
+the railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark,
+sallow man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows.&nbsp;
+His post was in as solitary and dismal a place as ever I
+saw.&nbsp; On either side, a dripping-wet wall of jagged stone,
+excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one way
+only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter
+perspective in the other direction terminating in a gloomy red
+light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose
+massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing, and
+forbidding air.&nbsp; So little sunlight ever found its way to
+this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much cold
+wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had
+left the natural world.</p>
+<p>Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have touched
+him.&nbsp; Not even then removing his eyes from mine, he stepped
+back one step, and lifted his hand.</p>
+<p>This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had
+riveted my attention when I looked down from up yonder.&nbsp; A
+visitor was a rarity, I should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity,
+I hoped?&nbsp; In me, he merely saw a man who had been shut up
+within narrow limits all his life, and who, being at last set
+free, had a newly-awakened interest in these great works.&nbsp;
+To such purpose I spoke to him; but I am far from sure of the
+terms I used; for, besides that I am not happy in opening any
+conversation, there was something in the man that daunted me.</p>
+<p>He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the
+tunnel&rsquo;s mouth, and looked all about it, as if something
+were missing from it, and then looked at me.</p>
+<p>That light was part of his charge?&nbsp; Was it not?</p>
+<p>He answered in a low voice,&mdash;&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know
+it is?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I perused the
+fixed eyes and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a
+man.&nbsp; I have speculated since, whether there may have been
+infection in his mind.</p>
+<p>In my turn, I stepped back.&nbsp; But in making the action, I
+detected in his eyes some latent fear of me.&nbsp; This put the
+monstrous thought to flight.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You look at me,&rdquo; I said, forcing a smile,
+&ldquo;as if you had a dread of me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was doubtful,&rdquo; he returned, &ldquo;whether I
+had seen you before.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He pointed to the red light he had looked at.</p>
+<p><a name="page314"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+314</span>&ldquo;There?&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>Intently watchful of me, he replied (but without sound),
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My good fellow, what should I do there?&nbsp; However,
+be that as it may, I never was there, you may swear.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think I may,&rdquo; he rejoined.&nbsp; &ldquo;Yes; I
+am sure I may.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>His manner cleared, like my own.&nbsp; He replied to my
+remarks with readiness, and in well-chosen words.&nbsp; Had he
+much to do there?&nbsp; Yes; that was to say, he had enough
+responsibility to bear; but exactness and watchfulness were what
+was required of him, and of actual work&mdash;manual
+labour&mdash;he had next to none.&nbsp; To change that signal, to
+trim those lights, and to turn this iron handle now and then, was
+all he had to do under that head.&nbsp; Regarding those many long
+and lonely hours of which I seemed to make so much, he could only
+say that the routine of his life had shaped itself into that
+form, and he had grown used to it.&nbsp; He had taught himself a
+language down here,&mdash;if only to know it by sight, and to
+have formed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation, could be
+called learning it.&nbsp; He had also worked at fractions and
+decimals, and tried a little algebra; but he was, and had been as
+a boy, a poor hand at figures.&nbsp; Was it necessary for him
+when on duty always to remain in that channel of damp air, and
+could he never rise into the sunshine from between those high
+stone walls?&nbsp; Why, that depended upon times and
+circumstances.&nbsp; Under some conditions there would be less
+upon the Line than under others, and the same held good as to
+certain hours of the day and night.&nbsp; In bright weather, he
+did choose occasions for getting a little above these lower
+shadows; but, being at all times liable to be called by his
+electric bell, and at such times listening for it with redoubled
+anxiety, the relief was less than I would suppose.</p>
+<p>He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an
+official book in which he had to make certain entries, a
+telegraphic instrument with its dial, face, and needles, and the
+little bell of which he had spoken.&nbsp; On my trusting that he
+would excuse the remark that he had been well educated, and (I
+hoped I might say without offence) perhaps educated above that
+station, he observed that instances of slight incongruity in such
+wise would rarely be found wanting among large bodies of men;
+that he had heard it was so in workhouses, in the police force,
+even in that last desperate resource, the army; and that he knew
+it was so, more or less, in any great railway staff.&nbsp; He had
+been, when young (if I could believe it, sitting in that
+hut,&mdash;he scarcely could), a student of natural philosophy,
+and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, misused his
+opportunities, gone down, and never risen again.&nbsp; He had no
+complaint to offer about that.&nbsp; He had made his bed, and he
+lay upon it.&nbsp; It was far too late to make another.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p314b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"The signal-man"
+title=
+"The signal-man"
+src="images/p314s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>All that I have here condensed he said in a quiet manner, with
+his grave, dark regards divided between me and the fire.&nbsp; He
+threw in the word, &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; from time to time, and
+especially when he referred <a name="page315"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 315</span>to his youth,&mdash;as though to
+request me to understand that he claimed to be nothing but what I
+found him.&nbsp; He was several times interrupted by the little
+bell, and had to read off messages, and send replies.&nbsp; Once
+he had to stand without the door, and display a flag as a train
+passed, and make some verbal communication to the driver.&nbsp;
+In the discharge of his duties, I observed him to be remarkably
+exact and vigilant, breaking off his discourse at a syllable, and
+remaining silent until what he had to do was done.</p>
+<p>In a word, I should have set this man down as one of the
+safest of men to be employed in that capacity, but for the
+circumstance that while he was speaking to me he twice broke off
+with a fallen colour, turned his face towards the little bell
+when it did <span class="GutSmall">NOT</span> ring, opened the
+door of the hut (which was kept shut to exclude the unhealthy
+damp), and looked out towards the red light near the mouth of the
+tunnel.&nbsp; On both of those occasions, he came back to the
+fire with the inexplicable air upon him which I had remarked,
+without being able to define, when we were so far asunder.</p>
+<p>Said I, when I rose to leave him, &ldquo;You almost make me
+think that I have met with a contented man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>(I am afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead him
+on.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I believe I used to be so,&rdquo; he rejoined, in the
+low voice in which he had first spoken; &ldquo;but I am troubled,
+sir, I am troubled.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He would have recalled the words if he could.&nbsp; He had
+said them, however, and I took them up quickly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With what?&nbsp; What is your trouble?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is very difficult to impart, sir.&nbsp; It is very,
+very difficult to speak of.&nbsp; If ever you make me another
+visit, I will try to tell you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I expressly intend to make you another visit.&nbsp;
+Say, when shall it be?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I go off early in the morning, and I shall be on again
+at ten to-morrow night, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will come at eleven.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He thanked me, and went out at the door with me.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll show my white light, sir,&rdquo; he said, in
+his peculiar low voice, &ldquo;till you have found the way
+up.&nbsp; When you have found it, don&rsquo;t call out!&nbsp; And
+when you are at the top, don&rsquo;t call out!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>His manner seemed to make the place strike colder to me, but I
+said no more than, &ldquo;Very well.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And when you come down to-morrow night, don&rsquo;t
+call out!&nbsp; Let me ask you a parting question.&nbsp; What
+made you cry, &lsquo;Halloa!&nbsp; Below there!&rsquo;
+to-night?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Heaven knows,&rdquo; said I.&nbsp; &ldquo;I cried
+something to that effect&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not to that effect, sir.&nbsp; Those were the very
+words.&nbsp; I know them well.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Admit those were the very words.&nbsp; I said them, no
+doubt, because I saw you below.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="page316"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+316</span>&ldquo;For no other reason?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What other reason could I possibly have?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you in
+any supernatural way?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He wished me good-night, and held up his light.&nbsp; I walked
+by the side of the down Line of rails (with a very disagreeable
+sensation of a train coming behind me) until I found the
+path.&nbsp; It was easier to mount than to descend, and I got
+back to my inn without any adventure.</p>
+<p>Punctual to my appointment, I placed my foot on the first
+notch of the zigzag next night, as the distant clocks were
+striking eleven.&nbsp; He was waiting for me at the bottom, with
+his white light on.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have not called out,&rdquo; I
+said, when we came close together; &ldquo;may I speak
+now?&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;By all means, sir.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Good-night, then, and here&rsquo;s my hand.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Good-night, sir, and here&rsquo;s mine.&rdquo;&nbsp; With
+that we walked side by side to his box, entered it, closed the
+door, and sat down by the fire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have made up my mind, sir,&rdquo; he began, bending
+forward as soon as we were seated, and speaking in a tone but a
+little above a whisper, &ldquo;that you shall not have to ask me
+twice what troubles me.&nbsp; I took you for some one else
+yesterday evening.&nbsp; That troubles me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That mistake?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&nbsp; That some one else.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who is it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Like me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know.&nbsp; I never saw the face.&nbsp;
+The left arm is across the face, and the right arm is
+waved,&mdash;violently waved.&nbsp; This way.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I followed his action with my eyes, and it was the action of
+an arm gesticulating, with the utmost passion and vehemence,
+&ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, clear the way!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One moonlight night,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;I was
+sitting here, when I heard a voice cry, &lsquo;Halloa!&nbsp;
+Below there!&rsquo;&nbsp; I started up, looked from that door,
+and saw this Some one else standing by the red light near the
+tunnel, waving as I just now showed you.&nbsp; The voice seemed
+hoarse with shouting, and it cried, &lsquo;Look out!&nbsp; Look
+out!&rsquo;&nbsp; And then again, &lsquo;Halloa!&nbsp; Below
+there!&nbsp; Look out!&rsquo;&nbsp; I caught up my lamp, turned
+it on red, and ran towards the figure, calling,
+&lsquo;What&rsquo;s wrong?&nbsp; What has happened?&nbsp;
+Where?&rsquo;&nbsp; It stood just outside the blackness of the
+tunnel.&nbsp; I advanced so close upon it that I wondered at its
+keeping the sleeve across its eyes.&nbsp; I ran right up at it,
+and had my hand stretched out to pull the sleeve away, when it
+was gone.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Into the tunnel?&rdquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&nbsp; I ran on into the tunnel, five hundred
+yards.&nbsp; I stopped, and held my lamp above my head, and saw
+the figures of the measured distance, and saw the wet stains
+stealing down the walls and trickling <a name="page317"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 317</span>through the arch.&nbsp; I ran out
+again faster than I had run in (for I had a mortal abhorrence of
+the place upon me), and I looked all round the red light with my
+own red light, and I went up the iron ladder to the gallery atop
+of it, and I came down again, and ran back here.&nbsp; I
+telegraphed both ways, &lsquo;An alarm has been given.&nbsp; Is
+anything wrong?&rsquo;&nbsp; The answer came back, both ways,
+&lsquo;All well.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my
+spine, I showed him how that this figure must be a deception of
+his sense of sight; and how that figures, originating in disease
+of the delicate nerves that minister to the functions of the eye,
+were known to have often troubled patients, some of whom had
+become conscious of the nature of their affliction, and had even
+proved it by experiments upon themselves.&nbsp; &ldquo;As to an
+imaginary cry,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;do but listen for a moment
+to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so low, and
+to the wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>That was all very well, he returned, after we had sat
+listening for a while, and he ought to know something of the wind
+and the wires,&mdash;he who so often passed long winter nights
+there, alone and watching.&nbsp; But he would beg to remark that
+he had not finished.</p>
+<p>I asked his pardon, and he slowly added these words, touching
+my arm,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Within six hours after the Appearance, the memorable
+accident on this Line happened, and within ten hours the dead and
+wounded were brought along through the tunnel over the spot where
+the figure had stood.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my best
+against it.&nbsp; It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this
+was a remarkable coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his
+mind.&nbsp; But it was unquestionable that remarkable
+coincidences did continually occur, and they must be taken into
+account in dealing with such a subject.&nbsp; Though to be sure I
+must admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he was going to
+bring the objection to bear upon me), men of common sense did not
+allow much for coincidences in making the ordinary calculations
+of life.</p>
+<p>He again begged to remark that he had not finished.</p>
+<p>I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into
+interruptions.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This,&rdquo; he said, again laying his hand upon my
+arm, and glancing over his shoulder with hollow eyes, &ldquo;was
+just a year ago.&nbsp; Six or seven months passed, and I had
+recovered from the surprise and shock, when one morning, as the
+day was breaking, I, standing at the door, looked towards the red
+light, and saw the spectre again.&rdquo;&nbsp; He stopped, with a
+fixed look at me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did it cry out?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&nbsp; It was silent.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did it wave its arm?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&nbsp; It leaned against the shaft of the light,
+with both hands before the face.&nbsp; Like this.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="page318"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 318</span>Once
+more I followed his action with my eyes.&nbsp; It was an action
+of mourning.&nbsp; I have seen such an attitude in stone figures
+on tombs.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you go up to it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I came in and sat down, partly to collect my thoughts,
+partly because it had turned me faint.&nbsp; When I went to the
+door again, daylight was above me, and the ghost was
+gone.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But nothing followed?&nbsp; Nothing came of
+this?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice
+giving a ghastly nod each time:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I
+noticed, at a carriage window on my side, what looked like a
+confusion of hands and heads, and something waved.&nbsp; I saw it
+just in time to signal the driver, Stop!&nbsp; He shut off, and
+put his brake on, but the train drifted past here a hundred and
+fifty yards or more.&nbsp; I ran after it, and, as I went along,
+heard terrible screams and cries.&nbsp; A beautiful young lady
+had died instantaneously in one of the compartments, and was
+brought in here, and laid down on this floor between
+us.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Involuntarily I pushed my chair back, as I looked from the
+boards at which he pointed to himself.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;True, sir.&nbsp; True.&nbsp; Precisely as it happened,
+so I tell it you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I could think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth
+was very dry.&nbsp; The wind and the wires took up the story with
+a long lamenting wail.</p>
+<p>He resumed.&nbsp; &ldquo;Now, sir, mark this, and judge how my
+mind is troubled.&nbsp; The spectre came back a week ago.&nbsp;
+Ever since, it has been there, now and again, by fits and
+starts.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;At the light?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;At the Danger-light.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What does it seem to do?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He repeated, if possible with increased passion and vehemence,
+that former gesticulation of, &ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, clear
+the way!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then he went on.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have no peace or rest for
+it.&nbsp; It calls to me, for many minutes together, in an
+agonised manner, &lsquo;Below there!&nbsp; Look out!&nbsp; Look
+out!&rsquo;&nbsp; It stands waving to me.&nbsp; It rings my
+little bell&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I caught at that.&nbsp; &ldquo;Did it ring your bell yesterday
+evening when I was here, and you went to the door?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Twice.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, see,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;how your imagination
+misleads you.&nbsp; My eyes were on the bell, and my ears were
+open to the bell, and if I am a living man, it did <span
+class="GutSmall">NOT</span> ring at those times.&nbsp; No, nor at
+any other time, except when it was rung in the natural course of
+physical things by the station communicating with you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He shook his head. &ldquo;I have never made a mistake as to
+that yet, sir.&nbsp; I have never confused the spectre&rsquo;s
+ring with the man&rsquo;s.&nbsp; The ghost&rsquo;s ring is a
+strange vibration in the bell that it derives from <a
+name="page319"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 319</span>nothing
+else, and I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the
+eye.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t wonder that you failed to hear it.&nbsp;
+But <i>I</i> heard it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And did the spectre seem to be there, when you looked
+out?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It <span class="GutSmall">WAS</span> there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Both times?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He repeated firmly: &ldquo;Both times.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Will you come to the door with me, and look for it
+now?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He bit his under lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but
+arose.&nbsp; I opened the door, and stood on the step, while he
+stood in the doorway.&nbsp; There was the Danger-light.&nbsp;
+There was the dismal mouth of the tunnel.&nbsp; There were the
+high, wet stone walls of the cutting.&nbsp; There were the stars
+above them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you see it?&rdquo; I asked him, taking particular
+note of his face.&nbsp; His eyes were prominent and strained, but
+not very much more so, perhaps, than my own had been when I had
+directed them earnestly towards the same spot.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is not
+there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Agreed,&rdquo; said I.</p>
+<p>We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats.&nbsp;
+I was thinking how best to improve this advantage, if it might be
+called one, when he took up the conversation in such a
+matter-of-course way, so assuming that there could be no serious
+question of fact between us, that I felt myself placed in the
+weakest of positions.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By this time you will fully understand, sir,&rdquo; he
+said, &ldquo;that what troubles me so dreadfully is the question,
+What does the spectre mean?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is its warning against?&rdquo; he said,
+ruminating, with his eyes on the fire, and only by times turning
+them on me.&nbsp; &ldquo;What is the danger?&nbsp; Where is the
+danger?&nbsp; There is danger overhanging somewhere on the
+Line.&nbsp; Some dreadful calamity will happen.&nbsp; It is not
+to be doubted this third time, after what has gone before.&nbsp;
+But surely this is a cruel haunting of me.&nbsp; What can I
+do?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his
+heated forehead.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on
+both, I can give no reason for it,&rdquo; he went on, wiping the
+palms of his hands.&nbsp; &ldquo;I should get into trouble, and
+do no good.&nbsp; They would think I was mad.&nbsp; This is the
+way it would work,&mdash;Message: &lsquo;Danger!&nbsp; Take
+care!&rsquo;&nbsp; Answer: &lsquo;What Danger?&nbsp;
+Where?&rsquo;&nbsp; Message: &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t know.&nbsp; But,
+for God&rsquo;s sake, take care!&rsquo;&nbsp; They would displace
+me.&nbsp; What else could they do?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>His pain of mind was most pitiable to see.&nbsp; It was the
+mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance
+by an unintelligible responsibility involving life.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When it first stood under the Danger-light,&rdquo; he
+went on, putting his dark hair back from his head, and drawing
+his hands outward <a name="page320"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+320</span>across and across his temples in an extremity of
+feverish distress, &ldquo;why not tell me where that accident was
+to happen,&mdash;if it must happen?&nbsp; Why not tell me how it
+could be averted,&mdash;if it could have been averted?&nbsp; When
+on its second coming it hid its face, why not tell me, instead,
+&lsquo;She is going to die.&nbsp; Let them keep her at
+home&rsquo;?&nbsp; If it came, on those two occasions, only to
+show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the
+third, why not warn me plainly now?&nbsp; And I, Lord help
+me!&nbsp; A mere poor signal-man on this solitary station!&nbsp;
+Why not go to somebody with credit to be believed, and power to
+act?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor
+man&rsquo;s sake, as well as for the public safety, what I had to
+do for the time was to compose his mind.&nbsp; Therefore, setting
+aside all question of reality or unreality between us, I
+represented to him that whoever thoroughly discharged his duty
+must do well, and that at least it was his comfort that he
+understood his duty, though he did not understand these
+confounding Appearances.&nbsp; In this effort I succeeded far
+better than in the attempt to reason him out of his
+conviction.&nbsp; He became calm; the occupations incidental to
+his post as the night advanced began to make larger demands on
+his attention: and I left him at two in the morning.&nbsp; I had
+offered to stay through the night, but he would not hear of
+it.</p>
+<p>That I more than once looked back at the red light as I
+ascended the pathway, that I did not like the red light, and that
+I should have slept but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see
+no reason to conceal.&nbsp; Nor did I like the two sequences of
+the accident and the dead girl.&nbsp; I see no reason to conceal
+that either.</p>
+<p>But what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how
+ought I to act, having become the recipient of this
+disclosure?&nbsp; I had proved the man to be intelligent,
+vigilant, painstaking, and exact; but how long might he remain
+so, in his state of mind?&nbsp; Though in a subordinate position,
+still he held a most important trust, and would I (for instance)
+like to stake my own life on the chances of his continuing to
+execute it with precision?</p>
+<p>Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something
+treacherous in my communicating what he had told me to his
+superiors in the Company, without first being plain with himself
+and proposing a middle course to him, I ultimately resolved to
+offer to accompany him (otherwise keeping his secret for the
+present) to the wisest medical practitioner we could hear of in
+those parts, and to take his opinion.&nbsp; A change in his time
+of duty would come round next night, he had apprised me, and he
+would be off an hour or two after sunrise, and on again soon
+after sunset.&nbsp; I had appointed to return accordingly.</p>
+<p>Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to
+enjoy it.&nbsp; The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed
+the field-path near the top of the deep cutting.&nbsp; I would
+extend my walk for an <a name="page321"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 321</span>hour, I said to myself, half an hour
+on and half an hour back, and it would then be time to go to my
+signal-man&rsquo;s box.</p>
+<p>Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and
+mechanically looked down, from the point from which I had first
+seen him.&nbsp; I cannot describe the thrill that seized upon me,
+when, close at the mouth of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a
+man, with his left sleeve across his eyes, passionately waving
+his right arm.</p>
+<p>The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for
+in a moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed,
+and that there was a little group of other men, standing at a
+short distance, to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he
+made.&nbsp; The Danger-light was not yet lighted.&nbsp; Against
+its shaft, a little low hut, entirely new to me, had been made of
+some wooden supports and tarpaulin.&nbsp; It looked no bigger
+than a bed.</p>
+<p>With an irresistible sense that something was
+wrong,&mdash;with a flashing self-reproachful fear that fatal
+mischief had come of my leaving the man there, and causing no one
+to be sent to overlook or correct what he did,&mdash;I descended
+the notched path with all the speed I could make.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; I asked the men.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Signal-man killed this morning, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not the man belonging to that box?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not the man I know?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You will recognise him, sir, if you knew him,&rdquo;
+said the man who spoke for the others, solemnly uncovering his
+own head, and raising an end of the tarpaulin, &ldquo;for his
+face is quite composed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;O, how did this happen, how did this happen?&rdquo; I
+asked, turning from one to another as the hut closed in
+again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He was cut down by an engine, sir.&nbsp; No man in
+England knew his work better.&nbsp; But somehow he was not clear
+of the outer rail.&nbsp; It was just at broad day.&nbsp; He had
+struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand.&nbsp; As the
+engine came out of the tunnel, his back was towards her, and she
+cut him down.&nbsp; That man drove her, and was showing how it
+happened.&nbsp; Show the gentleman, Tom.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his
+former place at the mouth of the tunnel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir,&rdquo; he
+said, &ldquo;I saw him at the end, like as if I saw him down a
+perspective-glass.&nbsp; There was no time to check speed, and I
+knew him to be very careful.&nbsp; As he didn&rsquo;t seem to
+take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running down
+upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What did you say?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I said, &lsquo;Below there!&nbsp; Look out!&nbsp; Look
+out!&nbsp; For God&rsquo;s sake, clear the way!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I started.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir.&nbsp; I never left off
+calling to him.&nbsp; <a name="page322"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 322</span>I put this arm before my eyes not to
+see, and I waved this arm to the last; but it was no
+use.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its
+curious circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing
+it, point out the coincidence that the warning of the
+Engine-Driver included, not only the words which the unfortunate
+Signal-man had repeated to me as haunting him, but also the words
+which I myself&mdash;not he&mdash;had attached, and that only in
+my own mind, to the gesticulation he had imitated.</p>
+<h2>FOOTNOTES.</h2>
+<p><a name="footnote121"></a><a href="#citation121"
+class="footnote">[121]</a>&nbsp; The original has eight chapters,
+which will be found in <i>All the Year Round</i>, vol. ii., old
+series; but those not printed here, excepting a page at the
+close, were not written by Mr. Dickens.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote303"></a><a href="#citation303"
+class="footnote">[303]</a>&nbsp; This paper appeared as a chapter
+&ldquo;To be taken with a Grain of Salt,&rdquo; in Doctor
+Marigold&rsquo;s Prescriptions.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote312"></a><a href="#citation312"
+class="footnote">[312]</a>&nbsp; This story appeared as a portion
+of the Christmas number for 1866, &ldquo;Mugby Junction,&rdquo;
+of which other portions follow in &ldquo;Barbox Brothers&rdquo;
+and &ldquo;The Boy at Mugby.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE GHOST STORIES***</p>
+<pre>
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Three Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens
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+
+
+
+
+
+Three Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+The Signal-Man
+The Haunted-House
+The Trial For Murder
+
+
+
+
+THE SIGNAL-MAN
+
+
+
+
+"Halloa!  Below there!"
+
+When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the
+door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short
+pole.  One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground,
+that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but
+instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep
+cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself about, and looked
+down the Line.  There was something remarkable in his manner of
+doing so, though I could not have said for my life what.  But I know
+it was remarkable enough to attract my notice, even though his
+figure was foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep trench, and
+mine was high above him, so steeped in the glow of an angry sunset,
+that I had shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all.
+
+"Halloa!  Below!"
+
+From looking down the Line, he turned himself about again, and,
+raising his eyes, saw my figure high above him.
+
+"Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you?"
+
+He looked up at me without replying, and I looked down at him
+without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle question.
+Just then there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly
+changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused
+me to start back, as though it had force to draw me down.  When such
+vapour as rose to my height from this rapid train had passed me, and
+was skimming away over the landscape, I looked down again, and saw
+him refurling the flag he had shown while the train went by.
+
+I repeated my inquiry.  After a pause, during which he seemed to
+regard me with fixed attention, he motioned with his rolled-up flag
+towards a point on my level, some two or three hundred yards
+distant.  I called down to him, "All right!" and made for that
+point.  There, by dint of looking closely about me, I found a rough
+zigzag descending path notched out, which I followed.
+
+The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitate.  It was
+made through a clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter as I went
+down.  For these reasons, I found the way long enough to give me
+time to recall a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which
+he had pointed out the path.
+
+When I came down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him
+again, I saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by
+which the train had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were
+waiting for me to appear.  He had his left hand at his chin, and
+that left elbow rested on his right hand, crossed over his breast.
+His attitude was one of such expectation and watchfulness that I
+stopped a moment, wondering at it.
+
+I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon the level of the
+railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark sallow
+man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows.  His post was in
+as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw.  On either side, a
+dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of
+sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this
+great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction
+terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a
+black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous,
+depressing, and forbidding air.  So little sunlight ever found its
+way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much
+cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had
+left the natural world.
+
+Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have touched him.
+Not even then removing his eyes from mine, he stepped back one step,
+and lifted his hand.
+
+This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my
+attention when I looked down from up yonder.  A visitor was a
+rarity, I should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity, I hoped?  In me,
+he merely saw a man who had been shut up within narrow limits all
+his life, and who, being at last set free, had a newly-awakened
+interest in these great works.  To such purpose I spoke to him; but
+I am far from sure of the terms I used; for, besides that I am not
+happy in opening any conversation, there was something in the man
+that daunted me.
+
+He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the
+tunnel's mouth, and looked all about it, as if something were
+missing from it, and then looked it me.
+
+That light was part of his charge?  Was it not?
+
+He answered in a low voice,--"Don't you know it is?"
+
+The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I perused the fixed eyes
+and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man.  I have
+speculated since, whether there may have been infection in his mind.
+
+In my turn, I stepped back.  But in making the action, I detected in
+his eyes some latent fear of me.  This put the monstrous thought to
+flight.
+
+"You look at me," I said, forcing a smile, "as if you had a dread of
+me."
+
+"I was doubtful," he returned, "whether I had seen you before."
+
+"Where?"
+
+He pointed to the red light he had looked at.
+
+"There?" I said.
+
+Intently watchful of me, he replied (but without sound), "Yes."
+
+"My good fellow, what should I do there?  However, be that as it
+may, I never was there, you may swear."
+
+"I think I may," he rejoined.  "Yes; I am sure I may."
+
+His manner cleared, like my own.  He replied to my remarks with
+readiness, and in well-chosen words.  Had he much to do there?  Yes;
+that was to say, he had enough responsibility to bear; but exactness
+and watchfulness were what was required of him, and of actual work--
+manual labour--he had next to none.  To change that signal, to trim
+those lights, and to turn this iron handle now and then, was all he
+had to do under that head.  Regarding those many long and lonely
+hours of which I seemed to make so much, he could only say that the
+routine of his life had shaped itself into that form, and he had
+grown used to it.  He had taught himself a language down here,--if
+only to know it by sight, and to have formed his own crude ideas of
+its pronunciation, could be called learning it.  He had also worked
+at fractions and decimals, and tried a little algebra; but he was,
+and had been as a boy, a poor hand at figures.  Was it necessary for
+him when on duty always to remain in that channel of damp air, and
+could he never rise into the sunshine from between those high stone
+walls?  Why, that depended upon times and circumstances.  Under some
+conditions there would be less upon the Line than under others, and
+the same held good as to certain hours of the day and night.  In
+bright weather, he did choose occasions for getting a little above
+these lower shadows; but, being at all times liable to be called by
+his electric bell, and at such times listening for it with redoubled
+anxiety, the relief was less than I would suppose.
+
+He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an
+official book in which he had to make certain entries, a telegraphic
+instrument with its dial, face, and needles, and the little bell of
+which he had spoken.  On my trusting that he would excuse the remark
+that he had been well educated, and (I hoped I might say without
+offence) perhaps educated above that station, he observed that
+instances of slight incongruity in such wise would rarely be found
+wanting among large bodies of men; that he had heard it was so in
+workhouses, in the police force, even in that last desperate
+resource, the army; and that he knew it was so, more or less, in any
+great railway staff.  He had been, when young (if I could believe
+it, sitting in that hut,--he scarcely could), a student of natural
+philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, misused
+his opportunities, gone down, and never risen again.  He had no
+complaint to offer about that.  He had made his bed, and he lay upon
+it.  It was far too late to make another.
+
+All that I have here condensed he said in a quiet manner, with his
+grave dark regards divided between me and the fire.  He threw in the
+word, "Sir," from time to time, and especially when he referred to
+his youth,--as though to request me to understand that he claimed to
+be nothing but what I found him.  He was several times interrupted
+by the little bell, and had to read off messages, and send replies.
+Once he had to stand without the door, and display a flag as a train
+passed, and make some verbal communication to the driver.  In the
+discharge of his duties, I observed him to be remarkably exact and
+vigilant, breaking off his discourse at a syllable, and remaining
+silent until what he had to do was done.
+
+In a word, I should have set this man down as one of the safest of
+men to be employed in that capacity, but for the circumstance that
+while he was speaking to me he twice broke off with a fallen colour,
+turned his face towards the little bell when it did NOT ring, opened
+the door of the hut (which was kept shut to exclude the unhealthy
+damp), and looked out towards the red light near the mouth of the
+tunnel.  On both of those occasions, he came back to the fire with
+the inexplicable air upon him which I had remarked, without being
+able to define, when we were so far asunder.
+
+Said I, when I rose to leave him, "You almost make me think that I
+have met with a contented man."
+
+(I am afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead him on.)
+
+"I believe I used to be so," he rejoined, in the low voice in which
+he had first spoken; "but I am troubled, sir, I am troubled."
+
+He would have recalled the words if he could.  He had said them,
+however, and I took them up quickly.
+
+"With what?  What is your trouble?"
+
+"It is very difficult to impart, sir.  It is very, very difficult to
+speak of.  If ever you make me another visit, I will try to tell
+you."
+
+"But I expressly intend to make you another visit.  Say, when shall
+it be?"
+
+"I go off early in the morning, and I shall be on again at ten to-
+morrow night, sir."
+
+"I will come at eleven."
+
+He thanked me, and went out at the door with me.  "I'll show my
+white light, sir," he said, in his peculiar low voice, "till you
+have found the way up.  When you have found it, don't call out!  And
+when you are at the top, don't call out!"
+
+His manner seemed to make the place strike colder to me, but I said
+no more than, "Very well."
+
+"And when you come down to-morrow night, don't call out!  Let me ask
+you a parting question.  What made you cry, 'Halloa!  Below there!'
+to-night?"
+
+"Heaven knows," said I.  "I cried something to that effect--"
+
+"Not to that effect, sir.  Those were the very words.  I know them
+well."
+
+"Admit those were the very words.  I said them, no doubt, because I
+saw you below."
+
+"For no other reason?"
+
+"What other reason could I possibly have?"
+
+"You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you in any
+supernatural way?"
+
+"No."
+
+He wished me good-night, and held up his light.  I walked by the
+side of the down Line of rails (with a very disagreeable sensation
+of a train coming behind me) until I found the path.  It was easier
+to mount than to descend, and I got back to my inn without any
+adventure.
+
+Punctual to my appointment, I placed my foot on the first notch of
+the zigzag next night, as the distant clocks were striking eleven.
+He was waiting for me at the bottom, with his white light on.  "I
+have not called out," I said, when we came close together; "may I
+speak now?"  "By all means, sir."  "Good-night, then, and here's my
+hand."  "Good-night, sir, and here's mine."  With that we walked
+side by side to his box, entered it, closed the door, and sat down
+by the fire.
+
+"I have made up my mind, sir," he began, bending forward as soon as
+we were seated, and speaking in a tone but a little above a whisper,
+"that you shall not have to ask me twice what troubles me.  I took
+you for some one else yesterday evening.  That troubles me."
+
+"That mistake?"
+
+"No.  That some one else."
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Like me?"
+
+"I don't know.  I never saw the face.  The left arm is across the
+face, and the right arm is waved,--violently waved.  This way."
+
+I followed his action with my eyes, and it was the action of an arm
+gesticulating, with the utmost passion and vehemence, "For God's
+sake, clear the way!"
+
+"One moonlight night," said the man, "I was sitting here, when I
+heard a voice cry, 'Halloa!  Below there!'  I started up, looked
+from that door, and saw this Some one else standing by the red light
+near the tunnel, waving as I just now showed you.  The voice seemed
+hoarse with shouting, and it cried, 'Look out!  Look out!'  And then
+attain, 'Halloa!  Below there!  Look out!'  I caught up my lamp,
+turned it on red, and ran towards the figure, calling, 'What's
+wrong?  What has happened?  Where?'  It stood just outside the
+blackness of the tunnel.  I advanced so close upon it that I
+wondered at its keeping the sleeve across its eyes.  I ran right up
+at it, and had my hand stretched out to pull the sleeve away, when
+it was gone."
+
+"Into the tunnel?" said I.
+
+"No.  I ran on into the tunnel, five hundred yards.  I stopped, and
+held my lamp above my head, and saw the figures of the measured
+distance, and saw the wet stains stealing down the walls and
+trickling through the arch.  I ran out again faster than I had run
+in (for I had a mortal abhorrence of the place upon me), and I
+looked all round the red light with my own red light, and I went up
+the iron ladder to the gallery atop of it, and I came down again,
+and ran back here.  I telegraphed both ways, 'An alarm has been
+given.  Is anything wrong?'  The answer came back, both ways, 'All
+well.'"
+
+Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine, I
+showed him how that this figure must be a deception of his sense of
+sight; and how that figures, originating in disease of the delicate
+nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have
+often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the
+nature of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments
+upon themselves.  "As to an imaginary cry," said I, "do but listen
+for a moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so
+low, and to the wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires."
+
+That was all very well, he returned, after we had sat listening for
+a while, and he ought to know something of the wind and the wires,--
+he who so often passed long winter nights there, alone and watching.
+But he would beg to remark that he had not finished.
+
+I asked his pardon, and he slowly added these words, touching my
+arm, -
+
+"Within six hours after the Appearance, the memorable accident on
+this Line happened, and within ten hours the dead and wounded were
+brought along through the tunnel over the spot where the figure had
+stood."
+
+A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my best against it.
+It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable
+coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his mind.  But it was
+unquestionable that remarkable coincidences did continually occur,
+and they must be taken into account in dealing with such a subject.
+Though to be sure I must admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he
+was going to bring the objection to bear upon me), men of common
+sense did not allow much for coincidences in making the ordinary
+calculations of life.
+
+He again begged to remark that he had not finished.
+
+I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into interruptions.
+
+"This," he said, again laying his hand upon my arm, and glancing
+over his shoulder with hollow eyes, "was just a year ago.  Six or
+seven months passed, and I had recovered from the surprise and
+shock, when one morning, as the day was breaking, I, standing at the
+door, looked towards the red light, and saw the spectre again."  He
+stopped, with a fixed look at me.
+
+"Did it cry out?"
+
+"No.  It was silent."
+
+"Did it wave its arm?"
+
+"No.  It leaned against the shaft of the light, with both hands
+before the face.  Like this."
+
+Once more I followed his action with my eyes.  It was an action of
+mourning.  I have seen such an attitude in stone figures on tombs.
+
+"Did you go up to it?"
+
+"I came in and sat down, partly to collect my thoughts, partly
+because it had turned me faint.  When I went to the door again,
+daylight was above me, and the ghost was gone."
+
+"But nothing followed?  Nothing came of this?"
+
+He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice giving
+a ghastly nod each time:-
+
+"That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I noticed, at a
+carriage window on my side, what looked like a confusion of hands
+and heads, and something waved.  I saw it just in time to signal the
+driver, Stop!  He shut off, and put his brake on, but the train
+drifted past here a hundred and fifty yards or more.  I ran after
+it, and, as I went along, heard terrible screams and cries.  A
+beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in one of the
+compartments, and was brought in here, and laid down on this floor
+between us."
+
+Involuntarily I pushed my chair back, as I looked from the boards at
+which he pointed to himself.
+
+"True, sir.  True.  Precisely as it happened, so I tell it you."
+
+I could think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was
+very dry.  The wind and the wires took up the story with a long
+lamenting wail.
+
+He resumed.  "Now, sir, mark this, and judge how my mind is
+troubled.  The spectre came back a week ago.  Ever since, it has
+been there, now and again, by fits and starts."
+
+"At the light?"
+
+"At the Danger-light."
+
+"What does it seem to do?"
+
+He repeated, if possible with increased passion and vehemence, that
+former gesticulation of, "For God's sake, clear the way!"
+
+Then he went on.  "I have no peace or rest for it.  It calls to me,
+for many minutes together, in an agonised manner, 'Below there!
+Look out!  Look out!'  It stands waving to me.  It rings my little
+bell--"
+
+I caught at that.  "Did it ring your bell yesterday evening when I
+was here, and you went to the door?"
+
+"Twice."
+
+"Why, see," said I, "how your imagination misleads you.  My eyes
+were on the bell, and my ears were open to the bell, and if I am a
+living man, it did NOT ring at those times.  No, nor at any other
+time, except when it was rung in the natural course of physical
+things by the station communicating with you."
+
+He shook his head. "I have never made a mistake as to that yet, sir.
+I have never confused the spectre's ring with the man's.  The
+ghost's ring is a strange vibration in the bell that it derives from
+nothing else, and I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the
+eye.  I don't wonder that you failed to hear it.  But I heard it."
+
+"And did the spectre seem to be there, when you looked out?"
+
+"It WAS there."'
+
+"Both times?"
+
+He repeated firmly:  "Both times."
+
+"Will you come to the door with me, and look for it now?"
+
+He bit his under lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but
+arose.  I opened the door, and stood on the step, while he stood in
+the doorway.  There was the Danger-light.  There was the dismal
+mouth of the tunnel.  There were the high, wet stone walls of the
+cutting.  There were the stars above them.
+
+"Do you see it?" I asked him, taking particular note of his face.
+His eyes were prominent and strained, but not very much more so,
+perhaps, than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly
+towards the same spot.
+
+"No," he answered.  "It is not there."
+
+"Agreed," said I.
+
+We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats.  I was
+thinking how best to improve this advantage, if it might be called
+one, when he took up the conversation in such a matter-of-course
+way, so assuming that there could be no serious question of fact
+between us, that I felt myself placed in the weakest of positions.
+
+"By this time you will fully understand, sir," he said, "that what
+troubles me so dreadfully is the question, What does the spectre
+mean?"
+
+I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand.
+
+"What is its warning against?" he said, ruminating, with his eyes on
+the fire, and only by times turning them on me.  "What is the
+danger?  Where is the danger?  There is danger overhanging somewhere
+on the Line.  Some dreadful calamity will happen.  It is not to be
+doubted this third time, after what has gone before.  But surely
+this is a cruel haunting of me.  What can I do?"
+
+He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated
+forehead.
+
+"If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on both, I can give
+no reason for it," he went on, wiping the palms of his hands.  "I
+should get into trouble, and do no good.  They would think I was
+mad.  This is the way it would work,--Message:  'Danger!  Take
+care!'  Answer:  'What Danger?  Where?'  Message:  'Don't know.
+But, for God's sake, take care!'  They would displace me.  What else
+could they do?"
+
+His pain of mind was most pitiable to see.  It was the mental
+torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an
+unintelligible responsibility involving life.
+
+"When it first stood under the Danger-light," he went on, putting
+his dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward
+across and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress,
+"why not tell me where that accident was to happen,--if it must
+happen?  Why not tell me how it could be averted,--if it could have
+been averted?  When on its second coming it hid its face, why not
+tell me, instead, 'She is going to die.  Let them keep her at home'?
+If it came, on those two occasions, only to show me that its
+warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the third, why not warn
+me plainly now?  And I, Lord help me!  A mere poor signal-man on
+this solitary station!  Why not go to somebody with credit to be
+believed, and power to act?"
+
+When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man's sake, as
+well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to
+compose his mind.  Therefore, setting aside all question of reality
+or unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever
+thoroughly discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it
+was his comfort that he understood his duty, though he did not
+understand these confounding Appearances.  In this effort I
+succeeded far better than in the attempt to reason him out of his
+conviction.  He became calm; the occupations incidental to his post
+as the night advanced began to make larger demands on his attention:
+and I left him at two in the morning.  I had offered to stay through
+the night, but he would not hear of it.
+
+That I more than once looked back at the red light as I ascended the
+pathway, that I did not like the red light, and that I should have
+slept but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see no reason to
+conceal.  Nor did I like the two sequences of the accident and the
+dead girl.  I see no reason to conceal that either.
+
+But what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how ought I
+to act, having become the recipient of this disclosure?  I had
+proved the man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact;
+but how long might he remain so, in his state of mind?  Though in a
+subordinate position, still he held a most important trust, and
+would I (for instance) like to stake my own life on the chances of
+his continuing to execute it with precision?
+
+Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something
+treacherous in my communicating what he had told me to his superiors
+in the Company, without first being plain with himself and proposing
+a middle course to him, I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany
+him (otherwise keeping his secret for the present) to the wisest
+medical practitioner we could hear of in those parts, and to take
+his opinion.  A change in his time of duty would come round next
+night, he had apprised me, and he would be off an hour or two after
+sunrise, and on again soon after sunset.  I had appointed to return
+accordingly.
+
+Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to enjoy
+it.  The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the field-path
+near the top of the deep cutting.  I would extend my walk for an
+hour, I said to myself, half an hour on and half an hour back, and
+it would then be time to go to my signal-man's box.
+
+Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically
+looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him.  I
+cannot describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the
+mouth of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left
+sleeve across his eyes, passionately waving his right arm.
+
+The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a
+moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and
+that there was a little group of other men, standing at a short
+distance, to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made.
+The Danger-light was not yet lighted.  Against its shaft, a little
+low hut, entirely new to me, had been made of some wooden supports
+and tarpaulin.  It looked no bigger than a bed.
+
+With an irresistible sense that something was wrong,--with a
+flashing self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of my
+leaving the man there, and causing no one to be sent to overlook or
+correct what he did,--I descended the notched path with all the
+speed I could make.
+
+"What is the matter?" I asked the men.
+
+"Signal-man killed this morning, sir."
+
+"Not the man belonging to that box?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Not the man I know?"
+
+"You will recognise him, sir, if you knew him," said the man who
+spoke for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head, and raising
+an end of the tarpaulin, "for his face is quite composed."
+
+"O, how did this happen, how did this happen?" I asked, turning from
+one to another as the hut closed in again.
+
+"He was cut down by an engine, sir.  No man in England knew his work
+better.  But somehow he was not clear of the outer rail.  It was
+just at broad day.  He had struck the light, and had the lamp in his
+hand.  As the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was towards
+her, and she cut him down.  That man drove her, and was showing how
+it happened.  Show the gentleman, Tom."
+
+The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former
+place at the mouth of the tunnel.
+
+"Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir," he said, "I saw him at
+the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass.  There was
+no time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful.  As he
+didn't seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were
+running down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"I said, 'Below there!  Look out!  Look out!  For God's sake, clear
+the way!'"
+
+I started.
+
+"Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir.  I never left off calling to him.
+I put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to
+the last; but it was no use."
+
+
+Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious
+circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing it, point
+out the coincidence that the warning of the Engine-Driver included,
+not only the words which the unfortunate Signal-man had repeated to
+me as haunting him, but also the words which I myself--not he--had
+attached, and that only in my own mind, to the gesticulation he had
+imitated.
+
+
+
+
+THE HAUNTED HOUSE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--THE MORTALS IN THE HOUSE
+
+
+
+Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by
+none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make
+acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas
+piece.  I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it.  There was
+no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted
+circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect.  More than that:
+I had come to it direct from a railway station:  it was not more
+than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I stood
+outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see
+the goods train running smoothly along the embankment in the valley.
+I will not say that everything was utterly commonplace, because I
+doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly commonplace people-
+-and there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on myself to say
+that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn
+morning.
+
+The manner of my lighting on it was this.
+
+I was travelling towards London out of the North, intending to stop
+by the way, to look at the house.  My health required a temporary
+residence in the country; and a friend of mine who knew that, and
+who had happened to drive past the house, had written to me to
+suggest it as a likely place.  I had got into the train at midnight,
+and had fallen asleep, and had woke up and had sat looking out of
+window at the brilliant Northern Lights in the sky, and had fallen
+asleep again, and had woke up again to find the night gone, with the
+usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn't been to sleep at
+all;--upon which question, in the first imbecility of that
+condition, I am ashamed to believe that I would have done wager by
+battle with the man who sat opposite me.  That opposite man had had,
+through the night--as that opposite man always has--several legs too
+many, and all of them too long.  In addition to this unreasonable
+conduct (which was only to be expected of him), he had had a pencil
+and a pocket-book, and had been perpetually listening and taking
+notes.  It had appeared to me that these aggravating notes related
+to the jolts and bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned
+myself to his taking them, under a general supposition that he was
+in the civil-engineering way of life, if he had not sat staring
+straight over my head whenever he listened.  He was a goggle-eyed
+gentleman of a perplexed aspect, and his demeanour became
+unbearable.
+
+It was a cold, dead morning (the sun not being up yet), and when I
+had out-watched the paling light of the fires of the iron country,
+and the curtain of heavy smoke that hung at once between me and the
+stars and between me and the day, I turned to my fellow-traveller
+and said:
+
+"I BEG your pardon, sir, but do you observe anything particular in
+me"?  For, really, he appeared to be taking down, either my
+travelling-cap or my hair, with a minuteness that was a liberty.
+
+The goggle-eyed gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as if
+the back of the carriage were a hundred miles off, and said, with a
+lofty look of compassion for my insignificance:
+
+"In you, sir?--B."
+
+"B, sir?" said I, growing warm.
+
+"I have nothing to do with you, sir," returned the gentleman; "pray
+let me listen--O."
+
+He enunciated this vowel after a pause, and noted it down.
+
+At first I was alarmed, for an Express lunatic and no communication
+with the guard, is a serious position.  The thought came to my
+relief that the gentleman might be what is popularly called a
+Rapper:  one of a sect for (some of) whom I have the highest
+respect, but whom I don't believe in.  I was going to ask him the
+question, when he took the bread out of my mouth.
+
+"You will excuse me," said the gentleman contemptuously, "if I am
+too much in advance of common humanity to trouble myself at all
+about it.  I have passed the night--as indeed I pass the whole of my
+time now--in spiritual intercourse."
+
+"O!" said I, somewhat snappishly.
+
+"The conferences of the night began," continued the gentleman,
+turning several leaves of his note-book, "with this message:  'Evil
+communications corrupt good manners.'"
+
+"Sound," said I; "but, absolutely new?"
+
+"New from spirits," returned the gentleman.
+
+I could only repeat my rather snappish "O!" and ask if I might be
+favoured with the last communication.
+
+"'A bird in the hand,'" said the gentleman, reading his last entry
+with great solemnity, "'is worth two in the Bosh.'"
+
+"Truly I am of the same opinion," said I; "but shouldn't it be
+Bush?"
+
+"It came to me, Bosh," returned the gentleman.
+
+The gentleman then informed me that the spirit of Socrates had
+delivered this special revelation in the course of the night.  "My
+friend, I hope you are pretty well.  There are two in this railway
+carriage.  How do you do?  There are seventeen thousand four hundred
+and seventy-nine spirits here, but you cannot see them.  Pythagoras
+is here.  He is not at liberty to mention it, but hopes you like
+travelling."  Galileo likewise had dropped in, with this scientific
+intelligence.  "I am glad to see you, AMICO. COME STA?  Water will
+freeze when it is cold enough.  ADDIO!"  In the course of the night,
+also, the following phenomena had occurred.  Bishop Butler had
+insisted on spelling his name, "Bubler," for which offence against
+orthography and good manners he had been dismissed as out of temper.
+John Milton (suspected of wilful mystification) had repudiated the
+authorship of Paradise Lost, and had introduced, as joint authors of
+that poem, two Unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and
+Scadgingtone.  And Prince Arthur, nephew of King John of England,
+had described himself as tolerably comfortable in the seventh
+circle, where he was learning to paint on velvet, under the
+direction of Mrs. Trimmer and Mary Queen of Scots.
+
+If this should meet the eye of the gentleman who favoured me with
+these disclosures, I trust he will excuse my confessing that the
+sight of the rising sun, and the contemplation of the magnificent
+Order of the vast Universe, made me impatient of them.  In a word, I
+was so impatient of them, that I was mightily glad to get out at the
+next station, and to exchange these clouds and vapours for the free
+air of Heaven.
+
+By that time it was a beautiful morning.  As I walked away among
+such leaves as had already fallen from the golden, brown, and russet
+trees; and as I looked around me on the wonders of Creation, and
+thought of the steady, unchanging, and harmonious laws by which they
+are sustained; the gentleman's spiritual intercourse seemed to me as
+poor a piece of journey-work as ever this world saw.  In which
+heathen state of mind, I came within view of the house, and stopped
+to examine it attentively.
+
+It was a solitary house, standing in a sadly neglected garden:  a
+pretty even square of some two acres.  It was a house of about the
+time of George the Second; as stiff, as cold, as formal, and in as
+bad taste, as could possibly be desired by the most loyal admirer of
+the whole quartet of Georges.  It was uninhabited, but had, within a
+year or two, been cheaply repaired to render it habitable; I say
+cheaply, because the work had been done in a surface manner, and was
+already decaying as to the paint and plaster, though the colours
+were fresh.  A lop-sided board drooped over the garden wall,
+announcing that it was "to let on very reasonable terms, well
+furnished."  It was much too closely and heavily shadowed by trees,
+and, in particular, there were six tall poplars before the front
+windows, which were excessively melancholy, and the site of which
+had been extremely ill chosen.
+
+It was easy to see that it was an avoided house--a house that was
+shunned by the village, to which my eye was guided by a church spire
+some half a mile off--a house that nobody would take.  And the
+natural inference was, that it had the reputation of being a haunted
+house.
+
+No period within the four-and-twenty hours of day and night is so
+solemn to me, as the early morning.  In the summer-time, I often
+rise very early, and repair to my room to do a day's work before
+breakfast, and I am always on those occasions deeply impressed by
+the stillness and solitude around me.  Besides that there is
+something awful in the being surrounded by familiar faces asleep--in
+the knowledge that those who are dearest to us and to whom we are
+dearest, are profoundly unconscious of us, in an impassive state,
+anticipative of that mysterious condition to which we are all
+tending--the stopped life, the broken threads of yesterday, the
+deserted seat, the closed book, the unfinished but abandoned
+occupation, all are images of Death.  The tranquillity of the hour
+is the tranquillity of Death.  The colour and the chill have the
+same association.  Even a certain air that familiar household
+objects take upon them when they first emerge from the shadows of
+the night into the morning, of being newer, and as they used to be
+long ago, has its counterpart in the subsidence of the worn face of
+maturity or age, in death, into the old youthful look.  Moreover, I
+once saw the apparition of my father, at this hour.  He was alive
+and well, and nothing ever came of it, but I saw him in the
+daylight, sitting with his back towards me, on a seat that stood
+beside my bed.  His head was resting on his hand, and whether he was
+slumbering or grieving, I could not discern.  Amazed to see him
+there, I sat up, moved my position, leaned out of bed, and watched
+him.  As he did not move, I spoke to him more than once.  As he did
+not move then, I became alarmed and laid my hand upon his shoulder,
+as I thought--and there was no such thing.
+
+For all these reasons, and for others less easily and briefly
+statable, I find the early morning to be my most ghostly time.  Any
+house would be more or less haunted, to me, in the early morning;
+and a haunted house could scarcely address me to greater advantage
+than then.
+
+I walked on into the village, with the desertion of this house upon
+my mind, and I found the landlord of the little inn, sanding his
+door-step.  I bespoke breakfast, and broached the subject of the
+house.
+
+"Is it haunted?" I asked.
+
+The landlord looked at me, shook his head, and answered, "I say
+nothing."
+
+"Then it IS haunted?"
+
+"Well!" cried the landlord, in an outburst of frankness that had the
+appearance of desperation--"I wouldn't sleep in it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"If I wanted to have all the bells in a house ring, with nobody to
+ring 'em; and all the doors in a house bang, with nobody to bang
+'em; and all sorts of feet treading about, with no feet there; why,
+then," said the landlord, "I'd sleep in that house."
+
+"Is anything seen there?"
+
+The landlord looked at me again, and then, with his former
+appearance of desperation, called down his stable-yard for "Ikey!"
+
+The call produced a high-shouldered young fellow, with a round red
+face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous mouth, a
+turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with
+mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to
+be in a fair way--if it were not pruned--of covering his head and
+overunning his boots.
+
+"This gentleman wants to know," said the landlord, "if anything's
+seen at the Poplars."
+
+"'Ooded woman with a howl," said Ikey, in a state of great
+freshness.
+
+"Do you mean a cry?"
+
+"I mean a bird, sir."
+
+"A hooded woman with an owl.  Dear me!  Did you ever see her?"
+
+"I seen the howl."
+
+"Never the woman?"
+
+"Not so plain as the howl, but they always keeps together."
+
+"Has anybody ever seen the woman as plainly as the owl?"
+
+"Lord bless you, sir!  Lots."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Lord bless you, sir!  Lots."
+
+"The general-dealer opposite, for instance, who is opening his
+shop?"
+
+"Perkins?  Bless you, Perkins wouldn't go a-nigh the place.  No!"
+observed the young man, with considerable feeling; "he an't
+overwise, an't Perkins, but he an't such a fool as THAT."
+
+(Here, the landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins's knowing
+better.)
+
+"Who is--or who was--the hooded woman with the owl?  Do you know?"
+
+"Well!" said Ikey, holding up his cap with one hand while he
+scratched his head with the other, "they say, in general, that she
+was murdered, and the howl he 'ooted the while."
+
+This very concise summary of the facts was all I could learn, except
+that a young man, as hearty and likely a young man as ever I see,
+had been took with fits and held down in 'em, after seeing the
+hooded woman.  Also, that a personage, dimly described as "a hold
+chap, a sort of one-eyed tramp, answering to the name of Joby,
+unless you challenged him as Greenwood, and then he said, 'Why not?
+and even if so, mind your own business,'" had encountered the hooded
+woman, a matter of five or six times.  But, I was not materially
+assisted by these witnesses:  inasmuch as the first was in
+California, and the last was, as Ikey said (and he was confirmed by
+the landlord), Anywheres.
+
+Now, although I regard with a hushed and solemn fear, the mysteries,
+between which and this state of existence is interposed the barrier
+of the great trial and change that fall on all the things that live;
+and although I have not the audacity to pretend that I know anything
+of them; I can no more reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing
+of bells, creaking of boards, and such-like insignificances, with
+the majestic beauty and pervading analogy of all the Divine rules
+that I am permitted to understand, than I had been able, a little
+while before, to yoke the spiritual intercourse of my fellow-
+traveller to the chariot of the rising sun.  Moreover, I had lived
+in two haunted houses--both abroad.  In one of these, an old Italian
+palace, which bore the reputation of being very badly haunted
+indeed, and which had recently been twice abandoned on that account,
+I lived eight months, most tranquilly and pleasantly:
+notwithstanding that the house had a score of mysterious bedrooms,
+which were never used, and possessed, in one large room in which I
+sat reading, times out of number at all hours, and next to which I
+slept, a haunted chamber of the first pretensions.  I gently hinted
+these considerations to the landlord.  And as to this particular
+house having a bad name, I reasoned with him, Why, how many things
+had bad names undeservedly, and how easy it was to give bad names,
+and did he not think that if he and I were persistently to whisper
+in the village that any weird-looking old drunken tinker of the
+neighbourhood had sold himself to the Devil, he would come in time
+to be suspected of that commercial venture!  All this wise talk was
+perfectly ineffective with the landlord, I am bound to confess, and
+was as dead a failure as ever I made in my life.
+
+To cut this part of the story short, I was piqued about the haunted
+house, and was already half resolved to take it.  So, after
+breakfast, I got the keys from Perkins's brother-in-law (a whip and
+harness maker, who keeps the Post Office, and is under submission to
+a most rigorous wife of the Doubly Seceding Little Emmanuel
+persuasion), and went up to the house, attended by my landlord and
+by Ikey.
+
+Within, I found it, as I had expected, transcendently dismal.  The
+slowly changing shadows waved on it from the heavy trees, were
+doleful in the last degree; the house was ill-placed, ill-built,
+ill-planned, and ill-fitted.  It was damp, it was not free from dry
+rot, there was a flavour of rats in it, and it was the gloomy victim
+of that indescribable decay which settles on all the work of man's
+hands whenever it's not turned to man's account.  The kitchens and
+offices were too large, and too remote from each other.  Above
+stairs and below, waste tracts of passage intervened between patches
+of fertility represented by rooms; and there was a mouldy old well
+with a green growth upon it, hiding like a murderous trap, near the
+bottom of the back-stairs, under the double row of bells.  One of
+these bells was labelled, on a black ground in faded white letters,
+MASTER B.  This, they told me, was the bell that rang the most.
+
+"Who was Master B.?" I asked.  "Is it known what he did while the
+owl hooted?"
+
+"Rang the bell," said Ikey.
+
+I was rather struck by the prompt dexterity with which this young
+man pitched his fur cap at the bell, and rang it himself.  It was a
+loud, unpleasant bell, and made a very disagreeable sound.  The
+other bells were inscribed according to the names of the rooms to
+which their wires were conducted:  as "Picture Room," "Double Room,"
+"Clock Room," and the like.  Following Master B.'s bell to its
+source I found that young gentleman to have had but indifferent
+third-class accommodation in a triangular cabin under the cock-loft,
+with a corner fireplace which Master B. must have been exceedingly
+small if he were ever able to warm himself at, and a corner chimney-
+piece like a pyramidal staircase to the ceiling for Tom Thumb.  The
+papering of one side of the room had dropped down bodily, with
+fragments of plaster adhering to it, and almost blocked up the door.
+It appeared that Master B., in his spiritual condition, always made
+a point of pulling the paper down.  Neither the landlord nor Ikey
+could suggest why he made such a fool of himself.
+
+Except that the house had an immensely large rambling loft at top, I
+made no other discoveries.  It was moderately well furnished, but
+sparely.  Some of the furniture--say, a third--was as old as the
+house; the rest was of various periods within the last half-century.
+I was referred to a corn-chandler in the market-place of the county
+town to treat for the house.  I went that day, and I took it for six
+months.
+
+It was just the middle of October when I moved in with my maiden
+sister (I venture to call her eight-and-thirty, she is so very
+handsome, sensible, and engaging).  We took with us, a deaf stable-
+man, my bloodhound Turk, two women servants, and a young person
+called an Odd Girl.  I have reason to record of the attendant last
+enumerated, who was one of the Saint Lawrence's Union Female
+Orphans, that she was a fatal mistake and a disastrous engagement.
+
+The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was a raw
+cold day when we took possession, and the gloom of the house was
+most depressing.  The cook (an amiable woman, but of a weak turn of
+intellect) burst into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested
+that her silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2
+Tuppintock's Gardens, Liggs's Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of
+anything happening to her from the damp.  Streaker, the housemaid,
+feigned cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr.  The Odd Girl, who
+had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and made
+arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery
+window, and rearing an oak.
+
+We went, before dark, through all the natural--as opposed to
+supernatural--miseries incidental to our state.  Dispiriting reports
+ascended (like the smoke) from the basement in volumes, and
+descended from the upper rooms.  There was no rolling-pin, there was
+no salamander (which failed to surprise me, for I don't know what it
+is), there was nothing in the house, what there was, was broken, the
+last people must have lived like pigs, what could the meaning of the
+landlord be?  Through these distresses, the Odd Girl was cheerful
+and exemplary.  But within four hours after dark we had got into a
+supernatural groove, and the Odd Girl had seen "Eyes," and was in
+hysterics.
+
+My sister and I had agreed to keep the haunting strictly to
+ourselves, and my impression was, and still is, that I had not left
+Ikey, when he helped to unload the cart, alone with the women, or
+any one of them, for one minute.  Nevertheless, as I say, the Odd
+Girl had "seen Eyes" (no other explanation could ever be drawn from
+her), before nine, and by ten o'clock had had as much vinegar
+applied to her as would pickle a handsome salmon.
+
+I leave a discerning public to judge of my feelings, when, under
+these untoward circumstances, at about half-past ten o'clock Master
+B.'s bell began to ring in a most infuriated manner, and Turk howled
+until the house resounded with his lamentations!
+
+I hope I may never again be in a state of mind so unchristian as the
+mental frame in which I lived for some weeks, respecting the memory
+of Master B.  Whether his bell was rung by rats, or mice, or bats,
+or wind, or what other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one
+cause, sometimes another, and sometimes by collusion, I don't know;
+but, certain it is, that it did ring two nights out of three, until
+I conceived the happy idea of twisting Master B.'s neck--in other
+words, breaking his bell short off--and silencing that young
+gentleman, as to my experience and belief, for ever.
+
+But, by that time, the Odd Girl had developed such improving powers
+of catalepsy, that she had become a shining example of that very
+inconvenient disorder.  She would stiffen, like a Guy Fawkes endowed
+with unreason, on the most irrelevant occasions.  I would address
+the servants in a lucid manner, pointing out to them that I had
+painted Master B.'s room and balked the paper, and taken Master B.'s
+bell away and balked the ringing, and if they could suppose that
+that confounded boy had lived and died, to clothe himself with no
+better behaviour than would most unquestionably have brought him and
+the sharpest particles of a birch-broom into close acquaintance in
+the present imperfect state of existence, could they also suppose a
+mere poor human being, such as I was, capable by those contemptible
+means of counteracting and limiting the powers of the disembodied
+spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?--I say I would become
+emphatic and cogent, not to say rather complacent, in such an
+address, when it would all go for nothing by reason of the Odd
+Girl's suddenly stiffening from the toes upward, and glaring among
+us like a parochial petrifaction.
+
+Streaker, the housemaid, too, had an attribute of a most
+discomfiting nature.  I am unable to say whether she was of an
+usually lymphatic temperament, or what else was the matter with her,
+but this young woman became a mere Distillery for the production of
+the largest and most transparent tears I ever met with.  Combined
+with these characteristics, was a peculiar tenacity of hold in those
+specimens, so that they didn't fall, but hung upon her face and
+nose.  In this condition, and mildly and deplorably shaking her
+head, her silence would throw me more heavily than the Admirable
+Crichton could have done in a verbal disputation for a purse of
+money.  Cook, likewise, always covered me with confusion as with a
+garment, by neatly winding up the session with the protest that the
+Ouse was wearing her out, and by meekly repeating her last wishes
+regarding her silver watch.
+
+As to our nightly life, the contagion of suspicion and fear was
+among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky.  Hooded
+woman?  According to the accounts, we were in a perfect Convent of
+hooded women.  Noises?  With that contagion downstairs, I myself
+have sat in the dismal parlour, listening, until I have heard so
+many and such strange noises, that they would have chilled my blood
+if I had not warmed it by dashing out to make discoveries.  Try this
+in bed, in the dead of the night:  try this at your own comfortable
+fire-side, in the life of the night.  You can fill any house with
+noises, if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in your
+nervous system.
+
+I repeat; the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and
+there is no such contagion under the sky.  The women (their noses in
+a chronic state of excoriation from smelling-salts) were always
+primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready to go off with hair-
+triggers.  The two elder detached the Odd Girl on all expeditions
+that were considered doubly hazardous, and she always established
+the reputation of such adventures by coming back cataleptic.  If
+Cook or Streaker went overhead after dark, we knew we should
+presently hear a bump on the ceiling; and this took place so
+constantly, that it was as if a fighting man were engaged to go
+about the house, administering a touch of his art which I believe is
+called The Auctioneer, to every domestic he met with.
+
+It was in vain to do anything.  It was in vain to be frightened, for
+the moment in one's own person, by a real owl, and then to show the
+owl.  It was in vain to discover, by striking an accidental discord
+on the piano, that Turk always howled at particular notes and
+combinations.  It was in vain to be a Rhadamanthus with the bells,
+and if an unfortunate bell rang without leave, to have it down
+inexorably and silence it.  It was in vain to fire up chimneys, let
+torches down the well, charge furiously into suspected rooms and
+recesses.  We changed servants, and it was no better.  The new set
+ran away, and a third set came, and it was no better.  At last, our
+comfortable housekeeping got to be so disorganised and wretched,
+that I one night dejectedly said to my sister:  "Patty, I begin to
+despair of our getting people to go on with us here, and I think we
+must give this up."
+
+My sister, who is a woman of immense spirit, replied, "No, John,
+don't give it up.  Don't be beaten, John.  There is another way."
+
+"And what is that?" said I.
+
+"John," returned my sister, "if we are not to be driven out of this
+house, and that for no reason whatever, that is apparent to you or
+me, we must help ourselves and take the house wholly and solely into
+our own hands."
+
+"But, the servants," said I.
+
+"Have no servants," said my sister, boldly.
+
+Like most people in my grade of life, I had never thought of the
+possibility of going on without those faithful obstructions.  The
+notion was so new to me when suggested, that I looked very doubtful.
+"We know they come here to be frightened and infect one another, and
+we know they are frightened and do infect one another," said my
+sister.
+
+"With the exception of Bottles," I observed, in a meditative tone.
+
+(The deaf stable-man.  I kept him in my service, and still keep him,
+as a phenomenon of moroseness not to be matched in England.)
+
+"To be sure, John," assented my sister; "except Bottles.  And what
+does that go to prove?  Bottles talks to nobody, and hears nobody
+unless he is absolutely roared at, and what alarm has Bottles ever
+given, or taken!  None."
+
+This was perfectly true; the individual in question having retired,
+every night at ten o'clock, to his bed over the coach-house, with no
+other company than a pitchfork and a pail of water.  That the pail
+of water would have been over me, and the pitchfork through me, if I
+had put myself without announcement in Bottles's way after that
+minute, I had deposited in my own mind as a fact worth remembering.
+Neither had Bottles ever taken the least notice of any of our many
+uproars.  An imperturbable and speechless man, he had sat at his
+supper, with Streaker present in a swoon, and the Odd Girl marble,
+and had only put another potato in his cheek, or profited by the
+general misery to help himself to beefsteak pie.
+
+"And so," continued my sister, "I exempt Bottles.  And considering,
+John, that the house is too large, and perhaps too lonely, to be
+kept well in hand by Bottles, you, and me, I propose that we cast
+about among our friends for a certain selected number of the most
+reliable and willing--form a Society here for three months--wait
+upon ourselves and one another--live cheerfully and socially--and
+see what happens."
+
+I was so charmed with my sister, that I embraced her on the spot,
+and went into her plan with the greatest ardour.
+
+We were then in the third week of November; but, we took our
+measures so vigorously, and were so well seconded by the friends in
+whom we confided, that there was still a week of the month
+unexpired, when our party all came down together merrily, and
+mustered in the haunted house.
+
+I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I made while
+my sister and I were yet alone.  It occurring to me as not
+improbable that Turk howled in the house at night, partly because he
+wanted to get out of it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but
+unchained; and I seriously warned the village that any man who came
+in his way must not expect to leave him without a rip in his own
+throat.  I then casually asked Ikey if he were a judge of a gun?  On
+his saying, "Yes, sir, I knows a good gun when I sees her," I begged
+the favour of his stepping up to the house and looking at mine.
+
+"SHE'S a true one, sir," said Ikey, after inspecting a double-
+barrelled rifle that I bought in New York a few years ago.  "No
+mistake about HER, sir."
+
+"Ikey," said I, "don't mention it; I have seen something in this
+house."
+
+"No, sir?" he whispered, greedily opening his eyes.  "'Ooded lady,
+sir?"
+
+"Don't be frightened," said I.  "It was a figure rather like you."
+
+"Lord, sir?"
+
+"Ikey!" said I, shaking hands with him warmly:  I may say
+affectionately; "if there is any truth in these ghost-stories, the
+greatest service I can do you, is, to fire at that figure.  And I
+promise you, by Heaven and earth, I will do it with this gun if I
+see it again!"
+
+The young man thanked me, and took his leave with some little
+precipitation, after declining a glass of liquor.  I imparted my
+secret to him, because I had never quite forgotten his throwing his
+cap at the bell; because I had, on another occasion, noticed
+something very like a fur cap, lying not far from the bell, one
+night when it had burst out ringing; and because I had remarked that
+we were at our ghostliest whenever he came up in the evening to
+comfort the servants.  Let me do Ikey no injustice.  He was afraid
+of the house, and believed in its being haunted; and yet he would
+play false on the haunting side, so surely as he got an opportunity.
+The Odd Girl's case was exactly similar.  She went about the house
+in a state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously and wilfully,
+and invented many of the alarms she spread, and made many of the
+sounds we heard.  I had had my eye on the two, and I know it.  It is
+not necessary for me, here, to account for this preposterous state
+of mind; I content myself with remarking that it is familiarly known
+to every intelligent man who has had fair medical, legal, or other
+watchful experience; that it is as well established and as common a
+state of mind as any with which observers are acquainted; and that
+it is one of the first elements, above all others, rationally to be
+suspected in, and strictly looked for, and separated from, any
+question of this kind.
+
+To return to our party.  The first thing we did when we were all
+assembled, was, to draw lots for bedrooms.  That done, and every
+bedroom, and, indeed, the whole house, having been minutely examined
+by the whole body, we allotted the various household duties, as if
+we had been on a gipsy party, or a yachting party, or a hunting
+party, or were shipwrecked.  I then recounted the floating rumours
+concerning the hooded lady, the owl, and Master B.:  with others,
+still more filmy, which had floated about during our occupation,
+relative to some ridiculous old ghost of the female gender who went
+up and down, carrying the ghost of a round table; and also to an
+impalpable Jackass, whom nobody was ever able to catch.  Some of
+these ideas I really believe our people below had communicated to
+one another in some diseased way, without conveying them in words.
+We then gravely called one another to witness, that we were not
+there to be deceived, or to deceive--which we considered pretty much
+the same thing--and that, with a serious sense of responsibility, we
+would be strictly true to one another, and would strictly follow out
+the truth.  The understanding was established, that any one who
+heard unusual noises in the night, and who wished to trace them,
+should knock at my door; lastly, that on Twelfth Night, the last
+night of holy Christmas, all our individual experiences since that
+then present hour of our coming together in the haunted house,
+should be brought to light for the good of all; and that we would
+hold our peace on the subject till then, unless on some remarkable
+provocation to break silence.
+
+We were, in number and in character, as follows:
+
+First--to get my sister and myself out of the way--there were we
+two.  In the drawing of lots, my sister drew her own room, and I
+drew Master B.'s.  Next, there was our first cousin John Herschel,
+so called after the great astronomer:  than whom I suppose a better
+man at a telescope does not breathe.  With him, was his wife:  a
+charming creature to whom he had been married in the previous
+spring.  I thought it (under the circumstances) rather imprudent to
+bring her, because there is no knowing what even a false alarm may
+do at such a time; but I suppose he knew his own business best, and
+I must say that if she had been MY wife, I never could have left her
+endearing and bright face behind.  They drew the Clock Room.  Alfred
+Starling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight-and-twenty
+for whom I have the greatest liking, was in the Double Room; mine,
+usually, and designated by that name from having a dressing-room
+within it, with two large and cumbersome windows, which no wedges I
+was ever able to make, would keep from shaking, in any weather, wind
+or no wind.  Alfred is a young fellow who pretends to be "fast"
+(another word for loose, as I understand the term), but who is much
+too good and sensible for that nonsense, and who would have
+distinguished himself before now, if his father had not
+unfortunately left him a small independence of two hundred a year,
+on the strength of which his only occupation in life has been to
+spend six.  I am in hopes, however, that his Banker may break, or
+that he may enter into some speculation guaranteed to pay twenty per
+cent.; for, I am convinced that if he could only be ruined, his
+fortune is made.  Belinda Bates, bosom friend of my sister, and a
+most intellectual, amiable, and delightful girl, got the Picture
+Room.  She has a fine genius for poetry, combined with real business
+earnestness, and "goes in"--to use an expression of Alfred's--for
+Woman's mission, Woman's rights, Woman's wrongs, and everything that
+is woman's with a capital W, or is not and ought to be, or is and
+ought not to be.  "Most praiseworthy, my dear, and Heaven prosper
+you!" I whispered to her on the first night of my taking leave of
+her at the Picture-Room door, "but don't overdo it.  And in respect
+of the great necessity there is, my darling, for more employments
+being within the reach of Woman than our civilisation has as yet
+assigned to her, don't fly at the unfortunate men, even those men
+who are at first sight in your way, as if they were the natural
+oppressors of your sex; for, trust me, Belinda, they do sometimes
+spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters, mothers,
+aunts, and grandmothers; and the play is, really, not ALL Wolf and
+Red Riding-Hood, but has other parts in it."  However, I digress.
+
+Belinda, as I have mentioned, occupied the Picture Room.  We had but
+three other chambers:  the Corner Room, the Cupboard Room, and the
+Garden Room.  My old friend, Jack Governor, "slung his hammock," as
+he called it, in the Corner Room.  I have always regarded Jack as
+the finest-looking sailor that ever sailed.  He is gray now, but as
+handsome as he was a quarter of a century ago--nay, handsomer.  A
+portly, cheery, well-built figure of a broad-shouldered man, with a
+frank smile, a brilliant dark eye, and a rich dark eyebrow.  I
+remember those under darker hair, and they look all the better for
+their silver setting.  He has been wherever his Union namesake
+flies, has Jack, and I have met old shipmates of his, away in the
+Mediterranean and on the other side of the Atlantic, who have beamed
+and brightened at the casual mention of his name, and have cried,
+"You know Jack Governor?  Then you know a prince of men!"  That he
+is!  And so unmistakably a naval officer, that if you were to meet
+him coming out of an Esquimaux snow-hut in seal's skin, you would be
+vaguely persuaded he was in full naval uniform.
+
+Jack once had that bright clear eye of his on my sister; but, it
+fell out that he married another lady and took her to South America,
+where she died.  This was a dozen years ago or more.  He brought
+down with him to our haunted house a little cask of salt beef; for,
+he is always convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling,
+is mere carrion, and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a
+piece in his portmanteau.  He had also volunteered to bring with him
+one "Nat Beaver," an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantman.
+Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face and figure, and apparently
+as hard as a block all over, proved to be an intelligent man, with a
+world of watery experiences in him, and great practical knowledge.
+At times, there was a curious nervousness about him, apparently the
+lingering result of some old illness; but, it seldom lasted many
+minutes.  He got the Cupboard Room, and lay there next to Mr.
+Undery, my friend and solicitor:  who came down, in an amateur
+capacity, "to go through with it," as he said, and who plays whist
+better than the whole Law List, from the red cover at the beginning
+to the red cover at the end.
+
+I never was happier in my life, and I believe it was the universal
+feeling among us.  Jack Governor, always a man of wonderful
+resources, was Chief Cook, and made some of the best dishes I ever
+ate, including unapproachable curries.  My sister was pastrycook and
+confectioner.  Starling and I were Cook's Mate, turn and turn about,
+and on special occasions the chief cook "pressed" Mr. Beaver.  We
+had a great deal of out-door sport and exercise, but nothing was
+neglected within, and there was no ill-humour or misunderstanding
+among us, and our evenings were so delightful that we had at least
+one good reason for being reluctant to go to bed.
+
+We had a few night alarms in the beginning.  On the first night, I
+was knocked up by Jack with a most wonderful ship's lantern in his
+hand, like the gills of some monster of the deep, who informed me
+that he "was going aloft to the main truck," to have the weathercock
+down.  It was a stormy night and I remonstrated; but Jack called my
+attention to its making a sound like a cry of despair, and said
+somebody would be "hailing a ghost" presently, if it wasn't done.
+So, up to the top of the house, where I could hardly stand for the
+wind, we went, accompanied by Mr. Beaver; and there Jack, lantern
+and all, with Mr. Beaver after him, swarmed up to the top of a
+cupola, some two dozen feet above the chimneys, and stood upon
+nothing particular, coolly knocking the weathercock off, until they
+both got into such good spirits with the wind and the height, that I
+thought they would never come down.  Another night, they turned out
+again, and had a chimney-cowl off.  Another night, they cut a
+sobbing and gulping water-pipe away.  Another night, they found out
+something else.  On several occasions, they both, in the coolest
+manner, simultaneously dropped out of their respective bedroom
+windows, hand over hand by their counterpanes, to "overhaul"
+something mysterious in the garden.
+
+The engagement among us was faithfully kept, and nobody revealed
+anything.  All we knew was, if any one's room were haunted, no one
+looked the worse for it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE GHOST IN MASTER B.'S ROOM
+
+
+
+When I established myself in the triangular garret which had gained
+so distinguished a reputation, my thoughts naturally turned to
+Master B.  My speculations about him were uneasy and manifold.
+Whether his Christian name was Benjamin, Bissextile (from his having
+been born in Leap Year), Bartholomew, or Bill.  Whether the initial
+letter belonged to his family name, and that was Baxter, Black,
+Brown, Barker, Buggins, Baker, or Bird.  Whether he was a foundling,
+and had been baptized B.  Whether he was a lion-hearted boy, and B.
+was short for Briton, or for Bull.  Whether he could possibly have
+been kith and kin to an illustrious lady who brightened my own
+childhood, and had come of the blood of the brilliant Mother Bunch?
+
+With these profitless meditations I tormented myself much.  I also
+carried the mysterious letter into the appearance and pursuits of
+the deceased; wondering whether he dressed in Blue, wore Boots (he
+couldn't have been Bald), was a boy of Brains, liked Books, was good
+at Bowling, had any skill as a Boxer, even in his Buoyant Boyhood
+Bathed from a Bathing-machine at Bognor, Bangor, Bournemouth,
+Brighton, or Broadstairs, like a Bounding Billiard Ball?
+
+So, from the first, I was haunted by the letter B.
+
+It was not long before I remarked that I never by any hazard had a
+dream of Master B., or of anything belonging to him.  But, the
+instant I awoke from sleep, at whatever hour of the night, my
+thoughts took him up, and roamed away, trying to attach his initial
+letter to something that would fit it and keep it quiet.
+
+For six nights, I had been worried this in Master B.'s room, when I
+began to perceive that things were going wrong.
+
+The first appearance that presented itself was early in the morning
+when it was but just daylight and no more.  I was standing shaving
+at my glass, when I suddenly discovered, to my consternation and
+amazement, that I was shaving--not myself--I am fifty--but a boy.
+Apparently Master B.!
+
+I trembled and looked over my shoulder; nothing there.  I looked
+again in the glass, and distinctly saw the features and expression
+of a boy, who was shaving, not to get rid of a beard, but to get
+one.  Extremely troubled in my mind, I took a few turns in the room,
+and went back to the looking-glass, resolved to steady my hand and
+complete the operation in which I had been disturbed.  Opening my
+eyes, which I had shut while recovering my firmness, I now met in
+the glass, looking straight at me, the eyes of a young man of four
+or five and twenty.  Terrified by this new ghost, I closed my eyes,
+and made a strong effort to recover myself.  Opening them again, I
+saw, shaving his cheek in the glass, my father, who has long been
+dead.  Nay, I even saw my grandfather too, whom I never did see in
+my life.
+
+Although naturally much affected by these remarkable visitations, I
+determined to keep my secret, until the time agreed upon for the
+present general disclosure.  Agitated by a multitude of curious
+thoughts, I retired to my room, that night, prepared to encounter
+some new experience of a spectral character.  Nor was my preparation
+needless, for, waking from an uneasy sleep at exactly two o'clock in
+the morning, what were my feelings to find that I was sharing my bed
+with the skeleton of Master B.!
+
+I sprang up, and the skeleton sprang up also.  I then heard a
+plaintive voice saying, "Where am I?  What is become of me?" and,
+looking hard in that direction, perceived the ghost of Master B.
+
+The young spectre was dressed in an obsolete fashion:  or rather,
+was not so much dressed as put into a case of inferior pepper-and-
+salt cloth, made horrible by means of shining buttons.  I observed
+that these buttons went, in a double row, over each shoulder of the
+young ghost, and appeared to descend his back.  He wore a frill
+round his neck.  His right hand (which I distinctly noticed to be
+inky) was laid upon his stomach; connecting this action with some
+feeble pimples on his countenance, and his general air of nausea, I
+concluded this ghost to be the ghost of a boy who had habitually
+taken a great deal too much medicine.
+
+"Where am I?" said the little spectre, in a pathetic voice.  "And
+why was I born in the Calomel days, and why did I have all that
+Calomel given me?"
+
+I replied, with sincere earnestness, that upon my soul I couldn't
+tell him.
+
+"Where is my little sister," said the ghost, "and where my angelic
+little wife, and where is the boy I went to school with?"
+
+I entreated the phantom to be comforted, and above all things to
+take heart respecting the loss of the boy he went to school with.  I
+represented to him that probably that boy never did, within human
+experience, come out well, when discovered.  I urged that I myself
+had, in later life, turned up several boys whom I went to school
+with, and none of them had at all answered.  I expressed my humble
+belief that that boy never did answer.  I represented that he was a
+mythic character, a delusion, and a snare.  I recounted how, the
+last time I found him, I found him at a dinner party behind a wall
+of white cravat, with an inconclusive opinion on every possible
+subject, and a power of silent boredom absolutely Titanic.  I
+related how, on the strength of our having been together at "Old
+Doylance's," he had asked himself to breakfast with me (a social
+offence of the largest magnitude); how, fanning my weak embers of
+belief in Doylance's boys, I had let him in; and how, he had proved
+to be a fearful wanderer about the earth, pursuing the race of Adam
+with inexplicable notions concerning the currency, and with a
+proposition that the Bank of England should, on pain of being
+abolished, instantly strike off and circulate, God knows how many
+thousand millions of ten-and-sixpenny notes.
+
+The ghost heard me in silence, and with a fixed stare.  "Barber!" it
+apostrophised me when I had finished.
+
+"Barber?" I repeated--for I am not of that profession.
+
+"Condemned," said the ghost, "to shave a constant change of
+customers--now, me--now, a young man--now, thyself as thou art--now,
+thy father--now, thy grandfather; condemned, too, to lie down with a
+skeleton every night, and to rise with it every morning--"
+
+(I shuddered on hearing this dismal announcement.)
+
+"Barber!  Pursue me!"
+
+I had felt, even before the words were uttered, that I was under a
+spell to pursue the phantom.  I immediately did so, and was in
+Master B.'s room no longer.
+
+Most people know what long and fatiguing night journeys had been
+forced upon the witches who used to confess, and who, no doubt, told
+the exact truth--particularly as they were always assisted with
+leading questions, and the Torture was always ready.  I asseverate
+that, during my occupation of Master B.'s room, I was taken by the
+ghost that haunted it, on expeditions fully as long and wild as any
+of those.  Assuredly, I was presented to no shabby old man with a
+goat's horns and tail (something between Pan and an old clothesman),
+holding conventional receptions, as stupid as those of real life and
+less decent; but, I came upon other things which appeared to me to
+have more meaning.
+
+Confident that I speak the truth and shall be believed, I declare
+without hesitation that I followed the ghost, in the first instance
+on a broom-stick, and afterwards on a rocking-horse.  The very smell
+of the animal's paint--especially when I brought it out, by making
+him warm--I am ready to swear to.  I followed the ghost, afterwards,
+in a hackney coach; an institution with the peculiar smell of which,
+the present generation is unacquainted, but to which I am again
+ready to swear as a combination of stable, dog with the mange, and
+very old bellows.  (In this, I appeal to previous generations to
+confirm or refute me.)  I pursued the phantom, on a headless donkey:
+at least, upon a donkey who was so interested in the state of his
+stomach that his head was always down there, investigating it; on
+ponies, expressly born to kick up behind; on roundabouts and swings,
+from fairs; in the first cab--another forgotten institution where
+the fare regularly got into bed, and was tucked up with the driver.
+
+Not to trouble you with a detailed account of all my travels in
+pursuit of the ghost of Master B., which were longer and more
+wonderful than those of Sinbad the Sailor, I will confine myself to
+one experience from which you may judge of many.
+
+I was marvellously changed.  I was myself, yet not myself.  I was
+conscious of something within me, which has been the same all
+through my life, and which I have always recognised under all its
+phases and varieties as never altering, and yet I was not the I who
+had gone to bed in Master B.'s room.  I had the smoothest of faces
+and the shortest of legs, and I had taken another creature like
+myself, also with the smoothest of faces and the shortest of legs,
+behind a door, and was confiding to him a proposition of the most
+astounding nature.
+
+This proposition was, that we should have a Seraglio.
+
+The other creature assented warmly.  He had no notion of
+respectability, neither had I.  It was the custom of the East, it
+was the way of the good Caliph Haroun Alraschid (let me have the
+corrupted name again for once, it is so scented with sweet
+memories!), the usage was highly laudable, and most worthy of
+imitation.  "O, yes!  Let us," said the other creature with a jump,
+"have a Seraglio."
+
+It was not because we entertained the faintest doubts of the
+meritorious character of the Oriental establishment we proposed to
+import, that we perceived it must be kept a secret from Miss
+Griffin.  It was because we knew Miss Griffin to be bereft of human
+sympathies, and incapable of appreciating the greatness of the great
+Haroun.  Mystery impenetrably shrouded from Miss Griffin then, let
+us entrust it to Miss Bule.
+
+We were ten in Miss Griffin's establishment by Hampstead Ponds;
+eight ladies and two gentlemen.  Miss Bule, whom I judge to have
+attained the ripe age of eight or nine, took the lead in society.  I
+opened the subject to her in the course of the day, and proposed
+that she should become the Favourite.
+
+Miss Bule, after struggling with the diffidence so natural to, and
+charming in, her adorable sex, expressed herself as flattered by the
+idea, but wished to know how it was proposed to provide for Miss
+Pipson?  Miss Bule--who was understood to have vowed towards that
+young lady, a friendship, halves, and no secrets, until death, on
+the Church Service and Lessons complete in two volumes with case and
+lock--Miss Bule said she could not, as the friend of Pipson,
+disguise from herself, or me, that Pipson was not one of the common.
+
+Now, Miss Pipson, having curly hair and blue eyes (which was my idea
+of anything mortal and feminine that was called Fair), I promptly
+replied that I regarded Miss Pipson in the light of a Fair
+Circassian.
+
+"And what then?" Miss Bule pensively asked.
+
+I replied that she must be inveigled by a Merchant, brought to me
+veiled, and purchased as a slave.
+
+[The other creature had already fallen into the second male place in
+the State, and was set apart for Grand Vizier.  He afterwards
+resisted this disposal of events, but had his hair pulled until he
+yielded.]
+
+"Shall I not be jealous?" Miss Bule inquired, casting down her eyes.
+
+"Zobeide, no," I replied; "you will ever be the favourite Sultana;
+the first place in my heart, and on my throne, will be ever yours."
+
+Miss Bule, upon that assurance, consented to propound the idea to
+her seven beautiful companions.  It occurring to me, in the course
+of the same day, that we knew we could trust a grinning and good-
+natured soul called Tabby, who was the serving drudge of the house,
+and had no more figure than one of the beds, and upon whose face
+there was always more or less black-lead, I slipped into Miss Bule's
+hand after supper, a little note to that effect; dwelling on the
+black-lead as being in a manner deposited by the finger of
+Providence, pointing Tabby out for Mesrour, the celebrated chief of
+the Blacks of the Hareem.
+
+There were difficulties in the formation of the desired institution,
+as there are in all combinations.  The other creature showed himself
+of a low character, and, when defeated in aspiring to the throne,
+pretended to have conscientious scruples about prostrating himself
+before the Caliph; wouldn't call him Commander of the Faithful;
+spoke of him slightingly and inconsistently as a mere "chap;" said
+he, the other creature, "wouldn't play"--Play!--and was otherwise
+coarse and offensive.  This meanness of disposition was, however,
+put down by the general indignation of an united Seraglio, and I
+became blessed in the smiles of eight of the fairest of the
+daughters of men.
+
+The smiles could only be bestowed when Miss Griffin was looking
+another way, and only then in a very wary manner, for there was a
+legend among the followers of the Prophet that she saw with a little
+round ornament in the middle of the pattern on the back of her
+shawl.  But every day after dinner, for an hour, we were all
+together, and then the Favourite and the rest of the Royal Hareem
+competed who should most beguile the leisure of the Serene Haroun
+reposing from the cares of State--which were generally, as in most
+affairs of State, of an arithmetical character, the Commander of the
+Faithful being a fearful boggler at a sum.
+
+On these occasions, the devoted Mesrour, chief of the Blacks of the
+Hareem, was always in attendance (Miss Griffin usually ringing for
+that officer, at the same time, with great vehemence), but never
+acquitted himself in a manner worthy of his historical reputation.
+In the first place, his bringing a broom into the Divan of the
+Caliph, even when Haroun wore on his shoulders the red robe of anger
+(Miss Pipson's pelisse), though it might be got over for the moment,
+was never to be quite satisfactorily accounted for.  In the second
+place, his breaking out into grinning exclamations of "Lork you
+pretties!" was neither Eastern nor respectful.  In the third place,
+when specially instructed to say "Bismillah!" he always said
+"Hallelujah!"  This officer, unlike his class, was too good-humoured
+altogether, kept his mouth open far too wide, expressed approbation
+to an incongruous extent, and even once--it was on the occasion of
+the purchase of the Fair Circassian for five hundred thousand purses
+of gold, and cheap, too--embraced the Slave, the Favourite, and the
+Caliph, all round.  (Parenthetically let me say God bless Mesrour,
+and may there have been sons and daughters on that tender bosom,
+softening many a hard day since!)
+
+Miss Griffin was a model of propriety, and I am at a loss to imagine
+what the feelings of the virtuous woman would have been, if she had
+known, when she paraded us down the Hampstead Road two and two, that
+she was walking with a stately step at the head of Polygamy and
+Mahomedanism.  I believe that a mysterious and terrible joy with
+which the contemplation of Miss Griffin, in this unconscious state,
+inspired us, and a grim sense prevalent among us that there was a
+dreadful power in our knowledge of what Miss Griffin (who knew all
+things that could be learnt out of book) didn't know, were the main-
+spring of the preservation of our secret.  It was wonderfully kept,
+but was once upon the verge of self-betrayal.  The danger and escape
+occurred upon a Sunday.  We were all ten ranged in a conspicuous
+part of the gallery at church, with Miss Griffin at our head--as we
+were every Sunday--advertising the establishment in an unsecular
+sort of way--when the description of Solomon in his domestic glory
+happened to be read.  The moment that monarch was thus referred to,
+conscience whispered me, "Thou, too, Haroun!"  The officiating
+minister had a cast in his eye, and it assisted conscience by giving
+him the appearance of reading personally at me.  A crimson blush,
+attended by a fearful perspiration, suffused my features.  The Grand
+Vizier became more dead than alive, and the whole Seraglio reddened
+as if the sunset of Bagdad shone direct upon their lovely faces.  At
+this portentous time the awful Griffin rose, and balefully surveyed
+the children of Islam.  My own impression was, that Church and State
+had entered into a conspiracy with Miss Griffin to expose us, and
+that we should all be put into white sheets, and exhibited in the
+centre aisle.  But, so Westerly--if I may be allowed the expression
+as opposite to Eastern associations--was Miss Griffin's sense of
+rectitude, that she merely suspected Apples, and we were saved.
+
+I have called the Seraglio, united.  Upon the question, solely,
+whether the Commander of the Faithful durst exercise a right of
+kissing in that sanctuary of the palace, were its peerless inmates
+divided.  Zobeide asserted a counter-right in the Favourite to
+scratch, and the fair Circassian put her face, for refuge, into a
+green baize bag, originally designed for books.  On the other hand,
+a young antelope of transcendent beauty from the fruitful plains of
+Camden Town (whence she had been brought, by traders, in the half-
+yearly caravan that crossed the intermediate desert after the
+holidays), held more liberal opinions, but stipulated for limiting
+the benefit of them to that dog, and son of a dog, the Grand Vizier-
+-who had no rights, and was not in question.  At length, the
+difficulty was compromised by the installation of a very youthful
+slave as Deputy.  She, raised upon a stool, officially received upon
+her cheeks the salutes intended by the gracious Haroun for other
+Sultanas, and was privately rewarded from the coffers of the Ladies
+of the Hareem.
+
+And now it was, at the full height of enjoyment of my bliss, that I
+became heavily troubled.  I began to think of my mother, and what
+she would say to my taking home at Midsummer eight of the most
+beautiful of the daughters of men, but all unexpected.  I thought of
+the number of beds we made up at our house, of my father's income,
+and of the baker, and my despondency redoubled.  The Seraglio and
+malicious Vizier, divining the cause of their Lord's unhappiness,
+did their utmost to augment it.  They professed unbounded fidelity,
+and declared that they would live and die with him.  Reduced to the
+utmost wretchedness by these protestations of attachment, I lay
+awake, for hours at a time, ruminating on my frightful lot.  In my
+despair, I think I might have taken an early opportunity of falling
+on my knees before Miss Griffin, avowing my resemblance to Solomon,
+and praying to be dealt with according to the outraged laws of my
+country, if an unthought-of means of escape had not opened before
+me.
+
+One day, we were out walking, two and two--on which occasion the
+Vizier had his usual instructions to take note of the boy at the
+turn-pike, and if he profanely gazed (which he always did) at the
+beauties of the Hareem, to have him bowstrung in the course of the
+night--and it happened that our hearts were veiled in gloom.  An
+unaccountable action on the part of the antelope had plunged the
+State into disgrace.  That charmer, on the representation that the
+previous day was her birthday, and that vast treasures had been sent
+in a hamper for its celebration (both baseless assertions), had
+secretly but most pressingly invited thirty-five neighbouring
+princes and princesses to a ball and supper:  with a special
+stipulation that they were "not to be fetched till twelve."  This
+wandering of the antelope's fancy, led to the surprising arrival at
+Miss Griffin's door, in divers equipages and under various escorts,
+of a great company in full dress, who were deposited on the top step
+in a flush of high expectancy, and who were dismissed in tears.  At
+the beginning of the double knocks attendant on these ceremonies,
+the antelope had retired to a back attic, and bolted herself in; and
+at every new arrival, Miss Griffin had gone so much more and more
+distracted, that at last she had been seen to tear her front.
+Ultimate capitulation on the part of the offender, had been followed
+by solitude in the linen-closet, bread and water and a lecture to
+all, of vindictive length, in which Miss Griffin had used
+expressions:  Firstly, "I believe you all of you knew of it;"
+Secondly, "Every one of you is as wicked as another;" Thirdly, "A
+pack of little wretches."
+
+Under these circumstances, we were walking drearily along; and I
+especially, with my.  Moosulmaun responsibilities heavy on me, was
+in a very low state of mind; when a strange man accosted Miss
+Griffin, and, after walking on at her side for a little while and
+talking with her, looked at me.  Supposing him to be a minion of the
+law, and that my hour was come, I instantly ran away, with the
+general purpose of making for Egypt.
+
+The whole Seraglio cried out, when they saw me making off as fast as
+my legs would carry me (I had an impression that the first turning
+on the left, and round by the public-house, would be the shortest
+way to the Pyramids), Miss Griffin screamed after me, the faithless
+Vizier ran after me, and the boy at the turnpike dodged me into a
+corner, like a sheep, and cut me off.  Nobody scolded me when I was
+taken and brought back; Miss Griffin only said, with a stunning
+gentleness, This was very curious!  Why had I run away when the
+gentleman looked at me?
+
+If I had had any breath to answer with, I dare say I should have
+made no answer; having no breath, I certainly made none.  Miss
+Griffin and the strange man took me between them, and walked me back
+to the palace in a sort of state; but not at all (as I couldn't help
+feeling, with astonishment) in culprit state.
+
+When we got there, we went into a room by ourselves, and Miss
+Griffin called in to her assistance, Mesrour, chief of the dusky
+guards of the Hareem.  Mesrour, on being whispered to, began to shed
+tears.  "Bless you, my precious!" said that officer, turning to me;
+"your Pa's took bitter bad!"
+
+I asked, with a fluttered heart, "Is he very ill?"
+
+"Lord temper the wind to you, my lamb!" said the good Mesrour,
+kneeling down, that I might have a comforting shoulder for my head
+to rest on, "your Pa's dead!"
+
+Haroun Alraschid took to flight at the words; the Seraglio vanished;
+from that moment, I never again saw one of the eight of the fairest
+of the daughters of men.
+
+I was taken home, and there was Debt at home as well as Death, and
+we had a sale there.  My own little bed was so superciliously looked
+upon by a Power unknown to me, hazily called "The Trade," that a
+brass coal-scuttle, a roasting-jack, and a birdcage, were obliged to
+be put into it to make a Lot of it, and then it went for a song.  So
+I heard mentioned, and I wondered what song, and thought what a
+dismal song it must have been to sing!
+
+Then, I was sent to a great, cold, bare, school of big boys; where
+everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy, without being
+enough; where everybody, largo and small, was cruel; where the boys
+knew all about the sale, before I got there, and asked me what I had
+fetched, and who had bought me, and hooted at me, "Going, going,
+gone!"  I never whispered in that wretched place that I had been
+Haroun, or had had a Seraglio:  for, I knew that if I mentioned my
+reverses, I should be so worried, that I should have to drown myself
+in the muddy pond near the playground, which looked like the beer.
+
+Ah me, ah me!  No other ghost has haunted the boy's room, my
+friends, since I have occupied it, than the ghost of my own
+childhood, the ghost of my own innocence, the ghost of my own airy
+belief.  Many a time have I pursued the phantom:  never with this
+man's stride of mine to come up with it, never with these man's
+hands of mine to touch it, never more to this man's heart of mine to
+hold it in its purity.  And here you see me working out, as
+cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of shaving in the glass
+a constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up with
+the skeleton allotted to me for my mortal companion.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRIAL FOR MURDER.
+
+
+
+
+I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among
+persons of superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their
+own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange
+sort.  Almost all men are afraid that what they could relate in such
+wise would find no parallel or response in a listener's internal
+life, and might be suspected or laughed at.  A truthful traveller,
+who should have seen some extraordinary creature in the likeness of
+a sea-serpent, would have no fear of mentioning it; but the same
+traveller, having had some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary of
+thought, vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable mental
+impression, would hesitate considerably before he would own to it.
+To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in which such
+subjects are involved.  We do not habitually communicate our
+experiences of these subjective things as we do our experiences of
+objective creation.  The consequence is, that the general stock of
+experience in this regard appears exceptional, and really is so, in
+respect of being miserably imperfect.
+
+In what I am going to relate, I have no intention of setting up,
+opposing, or supporting, any theory whatever.  I know the history of
+the Bookseller of Berlin, I have studied the case of the wife of a
+late Astronomer Royal as related by Sir David Brewster, and I have
+followed the minutest details of a much more remarkable case of
+Spectral Illusion occurring within my private circle of friends.  It
+may be necessary to state as to this last, that the sufferer (a
+lady) was in no degree, however distant, related to me.  A mistaken
+assumption on that head might suggest an explanation of a part of my
+own case,--but only a part,--which would be wholly without
+foundation.  It cannot be referred to my inheritance of any
+developed peculiarity, nor had I ever before any at all similar
+experience, nor have I ever had any at all similar experience since.
+
+It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, a certain murder
+was committed in England, which attracted great attention.  We hear
+more than enough of murderers as they rise in succession to their
+atrocious eminence, and I would bury the memory of this particular
+brute, if I could, as his body was buried, in Newgate Jail.  I
+purposely abstain from giving any direct clue to the criminal's
+individuality.
+
+When the murder was first discovered, no suspicion fell--or I ought
+rather to say, for I cannot be too precise in my facts, it was
+nowhere publicly hinted that any suspicion fell--on the man who was
+afterwards brought to trial.  As no reference was at that time made
+to him in the newspapers, it is obviously impossible that any
+description of him can at that time have been given in the
+newspapers.  It is essential that this fact be remembered.
+
+Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing the account of
+that first discovery, I found it to be deeply interesting, and I
+read it with close attention.  I read it twice, if not three times.
+The discovery had been made in a bedroom, and, when I laid down the
+paper, I was aware of a flash--rush--flow--I do not know what to
+call it,--no word I can find is satisfactorily descriptive,--in
+which I seemed to see that bedroom passing through my room, like a
+picture impossibly painted on a running river.  Though almost
+instantaneous in its passing, it was perfectly clear; so clear that
+I distinctly, and with a sense of relief, observed the absence of
+the dead body from the bed.
+
+It was in no romantic place that I had this curious sensation, but
+in chambers in Piccadilly, very near to the corner of St. James's
+Street.  It was entirely new to me.  I was in my easy-chair at the
+moment, and the sensation was accompanied with a peculiar shiver
+which started the chair from its position.  (But it is to be noted
+that the chair ran easily on castors.)  I went to one of the windows
+(there are two in the room, and the room is on the second floor) to
+refresh my eyes with the moving objects down in Piccadilly.  It was
+a bright autumn morning, and the street was sparkling and cheerful.
+The wind was high.  As I looked out, it brought down from the Park a
+quantity of fallen leaves, which a gust took, and whirled into a
+spiral pillar.  As the pillar fell and the leaves dispersed, I saw
+two men on the opposite side of the way, going from West to East.
+They were one behind the other.  The foremost man often looked back
+over his shoulder.  The second man followed him, at a distance of
+some thirty paces, with his right hand menacingly raised.  First,
+the singularity and steadiness of this threatening gesture in so
+public a thoroughfare attracted my attention; and next, the more
+remarkable circumstance that nobody heeded it.  Both men threaded
+their way among the other passengers with a smoothness hardly
+consistent even with the action of walking on a pavement; and no
+single creature, that I could see, gave them place, touched them, or
+looked after them.  In passing before my windows, they both stared
+up at me.  I saw their two faces very distinctly, and I knew that I
+could recognise them anywhere.  Not that I had consciously noticed
+anything very remarkable in either face, except that the man who
+went first had an unusually lowering appearance, and that the face
+of the man who followed him was of the colour of impure wax.
+
+I am a bachelor, and my valet and his wife constitute my whole
+establishment.  My occupation is in a certain Branch Bank, and I
+wish that my duties as head of a Department were as light as they
+are popularly supposed to be.  They kept me in town that autumn,
+when I stood in need of change.  I was not ill, but I was not well.
+My reader is to make the most that can be reasonably made of my
+feeling jaded, having a depressing sense upon me of a monotonous
+life, and being "slightly dyspeptic."  I am assured by my renowned
+doctor that my real state of health at that time justifies no
+stronger description, and I quote his own from his written answer to
+my request for it.
+
+As the circumstances of the murder, gradually unravelling, took
+stronger and stronger possession of the public mind, I kept them
+away from mine by knowing as little about them as was possible in
+the midst of the universal excitement.  But I knew that a verdict of
+Wilful Murder had been found against the suspected murderer, and
+that he had been committed to Newgate for trial.  I also knew that
+his trial had been postponed over one Sessions of the Central
+Criminal Court, on the ground of general prejudice and want of time
+for the preparation of the defence.  I may further have known, but I
+believe I did not, when, or about when, the Sessions to which his
+trial stood postponed would come on.
+
+My sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room, are all on one floor.
+With the last there is no communication but through the bedroom.
+True, there is a door in it, once communicating with the staircase;
+but a part of the fitting of my bath has been--and had then been for
+some years--fixed across it.  At the same period, and as a part of
+the same arrangement,--the door had been nailed up and canvased
+over.
+
+I was standing in my bedroom late one night, giving some directions
+to my servant before he went to bed.  My face was towards the only
+available door of communication with the dressing-room, and it was
+closed.  My servant's back was towards that door.  While I was
+speaking to him, I saw it open, and a man look in, who very
+earnestly and mysteriously beckoned to me.  That man was the man who
+had gone second of the two along Piccadilly, and whose face was of
+the colour of impure wax.
+
+The figure, having beckoned, drew back, and closed the door.  With
+no longer pause than was made by my crossing the bedroom, I opened
+the dressing-room door, and looked in.  I had a lighted candle
+already in my hand.  I felt no inward expectation of seeing the
+figure in the dressing-room, and I did not see it there.
+
+Conscious that my servant stood amazed, I turned round to him, and
+said:  "Derrick, could you believe that in my cool senses I fancied
+I saw a--"  As I there laid my hand upon his breast, with a sudden
+start he trembled violently, and said, "O Lord, yes, sir!  A dead
+man beckoning!"
+
+Now I do not believe that this John Derrick, my trusty and attached
+servant for more than twenty years, had any impression whatever of
+having seen any such figure, until I touched him.  The change in him
+was so startling, when I touched him, that I fully believe he
+derived his impression in some occult manner from me at that
+instant.
+
+I bade John Derrick bring some brandy, and I gave him a dram, and
+was glad to take one myself.  Of what had preceded that night's
+phenomenon, I told him not a single word.  Reflecting on it, I was
+absolutely certain that I had never seen that face before, except on
+the one occasion in Piccadilly.  Comparing its expression when
+beckoning at the door with its expression when it had stared up at
+me as I stood at my window, I came to the conclusion that on the
+first occasion it had sought to fasten itself upon my memory, and
+that on the second occasion it had made sure of being immediately
+remembered.
+
+I was not very comfortable that night, though I felt a certainty,
+difficult to explain, that the figure would not return.  At daylight
+I fell into a heavy sleep, from which I was awakened by John
+Derrick's coming to my bedside with a paper in his hand.
+
+This paper, it appeared, had been the subject of an altercation at
+the door between its bearer and my servant.  It was a summons to me
+to serve upon a Jury at the forthcoming Sessions of the Central
+Criminal Court at the Old Bailey.  I had never before been summoned
+on such a Jury, as John Derrick well knew.  He believed--I am not
+certain at this hour whether with reason or otherwise--that that
+class of Jurors were customarily chosen on a lower qualification
+than mine, and he had at first refused to accept the summons.  The
+man who served it had taken the matter very coolly.  He had said
+that my attendance or non-attendance was nothing to him; there the
+summons was; and I should deal with it at my own peril, and not at
+his.
+
+For a day or two I was undecided whether to respond to this call, or
+take no notice of it.  I was not conscious of the slightest
+mysterious bias, influence, or attraction, one way or other.  Of
+that I am as strictly sure as of every other statement that I make
+here.  Ultimately I decided, as a break in the monotony of my life,
+that I would go.
+
+The appointed morning was a raw morning in the month of November.
+There was a dense brown fog in Piccadilly, and it became positively
+black and in the last degree oppressive East of Temple Bar.  I found
+the passages and staircases of the Court-House flaringly lighted
+with gas, and the Court itself similarly illuminated.  I THINK that,
+until I was conducted by officers into the Old Court and saw its
+crowded state, I did not know that the Murderer was to be tried that
+day.  I THINK that, until I was so helped into the Old Court with
+considerable difficulty, I did not know into which of the two Courts
+sitting my summons would take me.  But this must not be received as
+a positive assertion, for I am not completely satisfied in my mind
+on either point.
+
+I took my seat in the place appropriated to Jurors in waiting, and I
+looked about the Court as well as I could through the cloud of fog
+and breath that was heavy in it.  I noticed the black vapour hanging
+like a murky curtain outside the great windows, and I noticed the
+stifled sound of wheels on the straw or tan that was littered in the
+street; also, the hum of the people gathered there, which a shrill
+whistle, or a louder song or hail than the rest, occasionally
+pierced.  Soon afterwards the Judges, two in number, entered, and
+took their seats.  The buzz in the Court was awfully hushed.  The
+direction was given to put the Murderer to the bar.  He appeared
+there.  And in that same instant I recognised in him the first of
+the two men who had gone down Piccadilly.
+
+If my name had been called then, I doubt if I could have answered to
+it audibly.  But it was called about sixth or eighth in the panel,
+and I was by that time able to say, "Here!"  Now, observe.  As I
+stepped into the box, the prisoner, who had been looking on
+attentively, but with no sign of concern, became violently agitated,
+and beckoned to his attorney.  The prisoner's wish to challenge me
+was so manifest, that it occasioned a pause, during which the
+attorney, with his hand upon the dock, whispered with his client,
+and shook his head.  I afterwards had it from that gentleman, that
+the prisoner's first affrighted words to him were, "AT ALL HAZARDS,
+CHALLENGE THAT MAN!"  But that, as he would give no reason for it,
+and admitted that he had not even known my name until he heard it
+called and I appeared, it was not done.
+
+Both on the ground already explained, that I wish to avoid reviving
+the unwholesome memory of that Murderer, and also because a detailed
+account of his long trial is by no means indispensable to my
+narrative, I shall confine myself closely to such incidents in the
+ten days and nights during which we, the Jury, were kept together,
+as directly bear on my own curious personal experience.  It is in
+that, and not in the Murderer, that I seek to interest my reader.
+It is to that, and not to a page of the Newgate Calendar, that I beg
+attention.
+
+I was chosen Foreman of the Jury.  On the second morning of the
+trial, after evidence had been taken for two hours (I heard the
+church clocks strike), happening to cast my eyes over my brother
+jurymen, I found an inexplicable difficulty in counting them.  I
+counted them several times, yet always with the same difficulty.  In
+short, I made them one too many.
+
+I touched the brother jurymen whose place was next me, and I
+whispered to him, "Oblige me by counting us."  He looked surprised
+by the request, but turned his head and counted. "Why," says he,
+suddenly, "we are Thirt-; but no, it's not possible.  No.  We are
+twelve."
+
+According to my counting that day, we were always right in detail,
+but in the gross we were always one too many.  There was no
+appearance--no figure--to account for it; but I had now an inward
+foreshadowing of the figure that was surely coming.
+
+The Jury were housed at the London Tavern.  We all slept in one
+large room on separate tables, and we were constantly in the charge
+and under the eye of the officer sworn to hold us in safe-keeping.
+I see no reason for suppressing the real name of that officer.  He
+was intelligent, highly polite, and obliging, and (I was glad to
+hear) much respected in the City.  He had an agreeable presence,
+good eyes, enviable black whiskers, and a fine sonorous voice.  His
+name was Mr. Harker.
+
+When we turned into our twelve beds at night, Mr. Harker's bed was
+drawn across the door.  On the night of the second day, not being
+disposed to lie down, and seeing Mr. Harker sitting on his bed, I
+went and sat beside him, and offered him a pinch of snuff.  As Mr.
+Harker's hand touched mine in taking it from my box, a peculiar
+shiver crossed him, and he said, "Who is this?"
+
+Following Mr. Harker's eyes, and looking along the room, I saw again
+the figure I expected,--the second of the two men who had gone down
+Piccadilly.  I rose, and advanced a few steps; then stopped, and
+looked round at Mr. Harker.  He was quite unconcerned, laughed, and
+said in a pleasant way, "I thought for a moment we had a thirteenth
+juryman, without a bed.  But I see it is the moonlight."
+
+Making no revelation to Mr. Harker, but inviting him to take a walk
+with me to the end of the room, I watched what the figure did.  It
+stood for a few moments by the bedside of each of my eleven brother
+jurymen, close to the pillow.  It always went to the right-hand side
+of the bed, and always passed out crossing the foot of the next bed.
+It seemed, from the action of the head, merely to look down
+pensively at each recumbent figure.  It took no notice of me, or of
+my bed, which was that nearest to Mr. Harker's.  It seemed to go out
+where the moonlight came in, through a high window, as by an aerial
+flight of stairs.
+
+Next morning at breakfast, it appeared that everybody present had
+dreamed of the murdered man last night, except myself and Mr.
+Harker.
+
+I now felt as convinced that the second man who had gone down
+Piccadilly was the murdered man (so to speak), as if it had been
+borne into my comprehension by his immediate testimony.  But even
+this took place, and in a manner for which I was not at all
+prepared.
+
+On the fifth day of the trial, when the case for the prosecution was
+drawing to a close, a miniature of the murdered man, missing from
+his bedroom upon the discovery of the deed, and afterwards found in
+a hiding-place where the Murderer had been seen digging, was put in
+evidence.  Having been identified by the witness under examination,
+it was handed up to the Bench, and thence handed down to be
+inspected by the Jury.  As an officer in a black gown was making his
+way with it across to me, the figure of the second man who had gone
+down Piccadilly impetuously started from the crowd, caught the
+miniature from the officer, and gave it to me with his own hands, at
+the same time saying, in a low and hollow tone,--before I saw the
+miniature, which was in a locket,--"I WAS YOUNGER THEN, AND MY FACE
+WAS NOT THEN DRAINED OF BLOOD."  It also came between me and the
+brother juryman to whom I would have given the miniature, and
+between him and the brother juryman to whom he would have given it,
+and so passed it on through the whole of our number, and back into
+my possession.  Not one of them, however, detected this.
+
+At table, and generally when we were shut up together in Mr.
+Harker's custody, we had from the first naturally discussed the
+day's proceedings a good deal.  On that fifth day, the case for the
+prosecution being closed, and we having that side of the question in
+a completed shape before us, our discussion was more animated and
+serious.  Among our number was a vestryman,--the densest idiot I
+have ever seen at large,--who met the plainest evidence with the
+most preposterous objections, and who was sided with by two flabby
+parochial parasites; all the three impanelled from a district so
+delivered over to Fever that they ought to have been upon their own
+trial for five hundred Murders.  When these mischievous blockheads
+were at their loudest, which was towards midnight, while some of us
+were already preparing for bed, I again saw the murdered man.  He
+stood grimly behind them, beckoning to me.  On my going towards
+them, and striking into the conversation, he immediately retired.
+This was the beginning of a separate series of appearances, confined
+to that long room in which we were confined.  Whenever a knot of my
+brother jurymen laid their heads together, I saw the head of the
+murdered man among theirs.  Whenever their comparison of notes was
+going against him, he would solemnly and irresistibly beckon to me.
+
+It will be borne in mind that down to the production of the
+miniature, on the fifth day of the trial, I had never seen the
+Appearance in Court.  Three changes occurred now that we entered on
+the case for the defence.  Two of them I will mention together,
+first.  The figure was now in Court continually, and it never there
+addressed itself to me, but always to the person who was speaking at
+the time.  For instance:  the throat of the murdered man had been
+cut straight across.  In the opening speech for the defence, it was
+suggested that the deceased might have cut his own throat.  At that
+very moment, the figure, with its throat in the dreadful condition
+referred to (this it had concealed before), stood at the speaker's
+elbow, motioning across and across its windpipe, now with the right
+hand, now with the left, vigorously suggesting to the speaker
+himself the impossibility of such a wound having been self-inflicted
+by either hand.  For another instance:  a witness to character, a
+woman, deposed to the prisoner's being the most amiable of mankind.
+The figure at that instant stood on the floor before her, looking
+her full in the face, and pointing out the prisoner's evil
+countenance with an extended arm and an outstretched finger.
+
+The third change now to be added impressed me strongly as the most
+marked and striking of all.  I do not theorise upon it; I accurately
+state it, and there leave it.  Although the Appearance was not
+itself perceived by those whom it addressed, its coming close to
+such persons was invariably attended by some trepidation or
+disturbance on their part.  It seemed to me as if it were prevented,
+by laws to which I was not amenable, from fully revealing itself to
+others, and yet as if it could invisibly, dumbly, and darkly
+overshadow their minds.  When the leading counsel for the defence
+suggested that hypothesis of suicide, and the figure stood at the
+learned gentleman's elbow, frightfully sawing at its severed throat,
+it is undeniable that the counsel faltered in his speech, lost for a
+few seconds the thread of his ingenious discourse, wiped his
+forehead with his handkerchief, and turned extremely pale.  When the
+witness to character was confronted by the Appearance, her eyes most
+certainly did follow the direction of its pointed finger, and rest
+in great hesitation and trouble upon the prisoner's face.  Two
+additional illustrations will suffice.  On the eighth day of the
+trial, after the pause which was every day made early in the
+afternoon for a few minutes' rest and refreshment, I came back into
+Court with the rest of the Jury some little time before the return
+of the Judges.  Standing up in the box and looking about me, I
+thought the figure was not there, until, chancing to raise my eyes
+to the gallery, I saw it bending forward, and leaning over a very
+decent woman, as if to assure itself whether the Judges had resumed
+their seats or not.  Immediately afterwards that woman screamed,
+fainted, and was carried out.  So with the venerable, sagacious, and
+patient Judge who conducted the trial.  When the case was over, and
+he settled himself and his papers to sum up, the murdered man,
+entering by the Judges' door, advanced to his Lordship's desk, and
+looked eagerly over his shoulder at the pages of his notes which he
+was turning.  A change came over his Lordship's face; his hand
+stopped; the peculiar shiver, that I knew so well, passed over him;
+he faltered, "Excuse me, gentlemen, for a few moments.  I am
+somewhat oppressed by the vitiated air;" and did not recover until
+he had drunk a glass of water.
+
+Through all the monotony of six of those interminable ten days,--the
+same Judges and others on the bench, the same Murderer in the dock,
+the same lawyers at the table, the same tones of question and answer
+rising to the roof of the court, the same scratching of the Judge's
+pen, the same ushers going in and out, the same lights kindled at
+the same hour when there had been any natural light of day, the same
+foggy curtain outside the great windows when it was foggy, the same
+rain pattering and dripping when it was rainy, the same footmarks of
+turnkeys and prisoner day after day on the same sawdust, the same
+keys locking and unlocking the same heavy doors,--through all the
+wearisome monotony which made me feel as if I had been Foreman of
+the Jury for a vast cried of time, and Piccadilly had flourished
+coevally with Babylon, the murdered man never lost one trace of his
+distinctness in my eyes, nor was he at any moment less distinct than
+anybody else.  I must not omit, as a matter of fact, that I never
+once saw the Appearance which I call by the name of the murdered man
+look at the Murderer.  Again and again I wondered, "Why does he
+not?"  But he never did.
+
+Nor did he look at me, after the production of the miniature, until
+the last closing minutes of the trial arrived.  We retired to
+consider, at seven minutes before ten at night.  The idiotic
+vestryman and his two parochial parasites gave us so much trouble
+that we twice returned into Court to beg to have certain extracts
+from the Judge's notes re-read.  Nine of us had not the smallest
+doubt about those passages, neither, I believe, had any one in the
+Court; the dunder-headed triumvirate, having no idea but
+obstruction, disputed them for that very reason.  At length we
+prevailed, and finally the Jury returned into Court at ten minutes
+past twelve.
+
+The murdered man at that time stood directly opposite the Jury-box,
+on the other side of the Court.  As I took my place, his eyes rested
+on me with great attention; he seemed satisfied, and slowly shook a
+great gray veil, which he carried on his arm for the first time,
+over his head and whole form.  As I gave in our verdict, "Guilty,"
+the veil collapsed, all was gone, and his place was empty.
+
+The Murderer, being asked by the Judge, according to usage, whether
+he had anything to say before sentence of Death should be passed
+upon him, indistinctly muttered something which was described in the
+leading newspapers of the following day as "a few rambling,
+incoherent, and half-audible words, in which he was understood to
+complain that he had not had a fair trial, because the Foreman of
+the Jury was prepossessed against him."  The remarkable declaration
+that he really made was this:  "MY LORD, I KNEW I WAS A DOOMED MAN,
+WHEN THE FOREMAN OF MY JURY CAME INTO THE BOX.  MY LORD, I KNEW HE
+WOULD NEVER LET ME OFF, BECAUSE, BEFORE I WAS TAKEN, HE SOMEHOW GOT
+TO MY BEDSIDE IN THE NIGHT, WOKE ME, AND PUT A ROPE ROUND MY NECK."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Three Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens
+
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+<center><h1>The Project Gutenberg EBook of<br><a href="#title"><i>Three Ghost Stories</i></a><br>by Charles Dickens</h1>
+<h3>(#33, #34, and #35 in our series of stories by Charles Dickens)</h3></center>
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+Title: Three Ghost Stories
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+Author: Charles Dickens
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+Release Date: April, 1998  [Etext #1289]
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THREE GHOST STORIES ***
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+This eBook was converted to HTML, with additional editing, by Jose Menendez
+from the Etext prepared by David Price from the 1894 Chapman and Hall edition
+of <i>Christmas Stories</i>.
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+<a name="title"></a><hr size="3" noshade>
+<center>
+<h1>THREE GHOST STORIES</h1><h3>BY</h3><br><h2>CHARLES DICKENS</h2>
+<hr size="3" noshade><br>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<br>
+<table class="bold" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="contents">
+<col align="left"><col align="right">
+<tr><td><a href="#1">The Signal-Man</a></td><td>����#33</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#2">The Haunted House</a></td><td>����#34</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#3">The Trial For Murder</a></td><td>����#35</td></tr></table>
+<br><hr><br>
+<h2><a name="1">THE SIGNAL-MAN</a></h2></center>
+<p><br>
+<big><big>&#8220;H</big></big>ALLOA!  Below there!&#8221;
+<p>
+When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the
+door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short
+pole.  One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground,
+that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but
+instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep
+cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself about, and looked
+down the Line.  There was something remarkable in his manner of
+doing so, though I could not have said for my life what.  But I know
+it was remarkable enough to attract my notice, even though his
+figure was foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep trench, and
+mine was high above him, so steeped in the glow of an angry sunset,
+that I had shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all.
+<p>
+&#8220;Halloa!  Below!&#8221;
+<p>
+From looking down the Line, he turned himself about again, and,
+raising his eyes, saw my figure high above him.
+<p>
+&#8220;Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you?&#8221;
+<p>
+He looked up at me without replying, and I looked down at him
+without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle question.
+Just then there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly
+changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused
+me to start back, as though it had force to draw me down.  When such
+vapour as rose to my height from this rapid train had passed me, and
+was skimming away over the landscape, I looked down again, and saw
+him refurling the flag he had shown while the train went by.
+<p>
+I repeated my inquiry.  After a pause, during which he seemed to
+regard me with fixed attention, he motioned with his rolled-up flag
+towards a point on my level, some two or three hundred yards
+distant.  I called down to him, &#8220;All right!&#8221; and made for that
+point.  There, by dint of looking closely about me, I found a rough
+zigzag descending path notched out, which I followed.
+<p>
+The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitate.  It was
+made through a clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter as I went
+down.  For these reasons, I found the way long enough to give me
+time to recall a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which
+he had pointed out the path.
+<p>
+When I came down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him
+again, I saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by
+which the train had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were
+waiting for me to appear.  He had his left hand at his chin, and
+that left elbow rested on his right hand, crossed over his breast.
+His attitude was one of such expectation and watchfulness that I
+stopped a moment, wondering at it.
+<p>
+I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon the level of the
+railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark, sallow
+man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows.  His post was in
+as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw.  On either side, a
+dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of
+sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this
+great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction
+terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a
+black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous,
+depressing, and forbidding air.  So little sunlight ever found its
+way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much
+cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had
+left the natural world.
+<p>
+Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have touched him.
+Not even then removing his eyes from mine, he stepped back one step,
+and lifted his hand.
+<p>
+This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my
+attention when I looked down from up yonder.  A visitor was a
+rarity, I should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity, I hoped?  In me,
+he merely saw a man who had been shut up within narrow limits all
+his life, and who, being at last set free, had a newly-awakened
+interest in these great works.  To such purpose I spoke to him; but
+I am far from sure of the terms I used; for, besides that I am not
+happy in opening any conversation, there was something in the man
+that daunted me.
+<p>
+He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the
+tunnel&#8217;s mouth, and looked all about it, as if something were
+missing from it, and then looked at me.
+<p>
+That light was part of his charge?  Was it not?
+<p>
+He answered in a low voice,&#8212;&#8220;Don&#8217;t you know it is?&#8221;
+<p>
+The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I perused the fixed eyes
+and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man.  I have
+speculated since, whether there may have been infection in his mind.
+<p>
+In my turn, I stepped back.  But in making the action, I detected in
+his eyes some latent fear of me.  This put the monstrous thought to
+flight.
+<p>
+&#8220;You look at me,&#8221; I said, forcing a smile, &#8220;as if you had a dread of
+me.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;I was doubtful,&#8221; he returned, &#8220;whether I had seen you before.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Where?&#8221;
+<p>
+He pointed to the red light he had looked at.
+<p>
+&#8220;There?&#8221; I said.
+<p>
+Intently watchful of me, he replied (but without sound), &#8220;Yes.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;My good fellow, what should I do there?  However, be that as it
+may, I never was there, you may swear.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;I think I may,&#8221; he rejoined.  &#8220;Yes; I am sure I may.&#8221;
+<p>
+His manner cleared, like my own.  He replied to my remarks with
+readiness, and in well-chosen words.  Had he much to do there?  Yes;
+that was to say, he had enough responsibility to bear; but exactness
+and watchfulness were what was required of him, and of actual
+work&#8212;manual labour&#8212;he had next to none.  To change that signal, to trim
+those lights, and to turn this iron handle now and then, was all he
+had to do under that head.  Regarding those many long and lonely
+hours of which I seemed to make so much, he could only say that the
+routine of his life had shaped itself into that form, and he had
+grown used to it.  He had taught himself a language down here,&#8212;if
+only to know it by sight, and to have formed his own crude ideas of
+its pronunciation, could be called learning it.  He had also worked
+at fractions and decimals, and tried a little algebra; but he was,
+and had been as a boy, a poor hand at figures.  Was it necessary for
+him when on duty always to remain in that channel of damp air, and
+could he never rise into the sunshine from between those high stone
+walls?  Why, that depended upon times and circumstances.  Under some
+conditions there would be less upon the Line than under others, and
+the same held good as to certain hours of the day and night.  In
+bright weather, he did choose occasions for getting a little above
+these lower shadows; but, being at all times liable to be called by
+his electric bell, and at such times listening for it with redoubled
+anxiety, the relief was less than I would suppose.
+<p>
+He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an
+official book in which he had to make certain entries, a telegraphic
+instrument with its dial, face, and needles, and the little bell of
+which he had spoken.  On my trusting that he would excuse the remark
+that he had been well educated, and (I hoped I might say without
+offence) perhaps educated above that station, he observed that
+instances of slight incongruity in such wise would rarely be found
+wanting among large bodies of men; that he had heard it was so in
+workhouses, in the police force, even in that last desperate
+resource, the army; and that he knew it was so, more or less, in any
+great railway staff.  He had been, when young (if I could believe
+it, sitting in that hut,&#8212;he scarcely could), a student of natural
+philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, misused
+his opportunities, gone down, and never risen again.  He had no
+complaint to offer about that.  He had made his bed, and he lay upon
+it.  It was far too late to make another.
+<p>
+All that I have here condensed he said in a quiet manner, with his
+grave, dark regards divided between me and the fire.  He threw in the
+word, &#8220;Sir,&#8221; from time to time, and especially when he referred to
+his youth,&#8212;as though to request me to understand that he claimed to
+be nothing but what I found him.  He was several times interrupted
+by the little bell, and had to read off messages, and send replies.
+Once he had to stand without the door, and display a flag as a train
+passed, and make some verbal communication to the driver.  In the
+discharge of his duties, I observed him to be remarkably exact and
+vigilant, breaking off his discourse at a syllable, and remaining
+silent until what he had to do was done.
+<p>
+In a word, I should have set this man down as one of the safest of
+men to be employed in that capacity, but for the circumstance that
+while he was speaking to me he twice broke off with a fallen colour,
+turned his face towards the little bell when it did <small>NOT</small> ring, opened
+the door of the hut (which was kept shut to exclude the unhealthy
+damp), and looked out towards the red light near the mouth of the
+tunnel.  On both of those occasions, he came back to the fire with
+the inexplicable air upon him which I had remarked, without being
+able to define, when we were so far asunder.
+<p>
+Said I, when I rose to leave him, &#8220;You almost make me think that I
+have met with a contented man.&#8221;
+<p>
+(I am afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead him on.)
+<p>
+&#8220;I believe I used to be so,&#8221; he rejoined, in the low voice in which
+he had first spoken; &#8220;but I am troubled, sir, I am troubled.&#8221;
+<p>
+He would have recalled the words if he could.  He had said them,
+however, and I took them up quickly.
+<p>
+&#8220;With what?  What is your trouble?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;It is very difficult to impart, sir.  It is very, very difficult to
+speak of.  If ever you make me another visit, I will try to tell
+you.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;But I expressly intend to make you another visit.  Say, when shall
+it be?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;I go off early in the morning, and I shall be on again at ten
+to-morrow night, sir.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;I will come at eleven.&#8221;
+<p>
+He thanked me, and went out at the door with me.  &#8220;I&#8217;ll show my
+white light, sir,&#8221; he said, in his peculiar low voice, &#8220;till you
+have found the way up.  When you have found it, don&#8217;t call out!  And
+when you are at the top, don&#8217;t call out!&#8221;
+<p>
+His manner seemed to make the place strike colder to me, but I said
+no more than, &#8220;Very well.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;And when you come down to-morrow night, don&#8217;t call out!  Let me ask
+you a parting question.  What made you cry, &#8216;Halloa!  Below there!&#8217;
+to-night?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Heaven knows,&#8221; said I.  &#8220;I cried something to that effect&#8212;&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Not to that effect, sir.  Those were the very words.  I know them
+well.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Admit those were the very words.  I said them, no doubt, because I
+saw you below.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;For no other reason?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;What other reason could I possibly have?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you in any
+supernatural way?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;No.&#8221;
+<p>
+He wished me good-night, and held up his light.  I walked by the
+side of the down Line of rails (with a very disagreeable sensation
+of a train coming behind me) until I found the path.  It was easier
+to mount than to descend, and I got back to my inn without any
+adventure.
+<p>
+Punctual to my appointment, I placed my foot on the first notch of
+the zigzag next night, as the distant clocks were striking eleven.
+He was waiting for me at the bottom, with his white light on.  &#8220;I
+have not called out,&#8221; I said, when we came close together; &#8220;may I
+speak now?&#8221;  &#8220;By all means, sir.&#8221;  &#8220;Good-night, then, and here&#8217;s my
+hand.&#8221;  &#8220;Good-night, sir, and here&#8217;s mine.&#8221;  With that we walked
+side by side to his box, entered it, closed the door, and sat down
+by the fire.
+<p>
+&#8220;I have made up my mind, sir,&#8221; he began, bending forward as soon as
+we were seated, and speaking in a tone but a little above a whisper,
+&#8220;that you shall not have to ask me twice what troubles me.  I took
+you for some one else yesterday evening.  That troubles me.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;That mistake?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;No.  That some one else.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Who is it?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;I don&#8217;t know.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Like me?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;I don&#8217;t know.  I never saw the face.  The left arm is across the
+face, and the right arm is waved,&#8212;violently waved.  This way.&#8221;
+<p>
+I followed his action with my eyes, and it was the action of an arm
+gesticulating, with the utmost passion and vehemence, &#8220;For God&#8217;s
+sake, clear the way!&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;One moonlight night,&#8221; said the man, &#8220;I was sitting here, when I
+heard a voice cry, &#8216;Halloa!  Below there!&#8217;  I started up, looked
+from that door, and saw this Some one else standing by the red light
+near the tunnel, waving as I just now showed you.  The voice seemed
+hoarse with shouting, and it cried, &#8216;Look out!  Look out!&#8217;  And then
+again, &#8216;Halloa!  Below there!  Look out!&#8217;  I caught up my lamp,
+turned it on red, and ran towards the figure, calling, &#8216;What&#8217;s
+wrong?  What has happened?  Where?&#8217;  It stood just outside the
+blackness of the tunnel.  I advanced so close upon it that I
+wondered at its keeping the sleeve across its eyes.  I ran right up
+at it, and had my hand stretched out to pull the sleeve away, when
+it was gone.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Into the tunnel?&#8221; said I.
+<p>
+&#8220;No.  I ran on into the tunnel, five hundred yards.  I stopped, and
+held my lamp above my head, and saw the figures of the measured
+distance, and saw the wet stains stealing down the walls and
+trickling through the arch.  I ran out again faster than I had run
+in (for I had a mortal abhorrence of the place upon me), and I
+looked all round the red light with my own red light, and I went up
+the iron ladder to the gallery atop of it, and I came down again,
+and ran back here.  I telegraphed both ways, &#8216;An alarm has been
+given.  Is anything wrong?&#8217;  The answer came back, both ways, &#8216;All
+well.&#8217;�&#8221;
+<p>
+Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine, I
+showed him how that this figure must be a deception of his sense of
+sight; and how that figures, originating in disease of the delicate
+nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have
+often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the
+nature of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments
+upon themselves.  &#8220;As to an imaginary cry,&#8221; said I, &#8220;do but listen
+for a moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so
+low, and to the wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires.&#8221;
+<p>
+That was all very well, he returned, after we had sat listening for
+a while, and he ought to know something of the wind and the wires,&#8212;he
+who so often passed long winter nights there, alone and watching.
+But he would beg to remark that he had not finished.
+<p>
+I asked his pardon, and he slowly added these words, touching my
+arm,&#8212;
+<p>
+&#8220;Within six hours after the Appearance, the memorable accident on
+this Line happened, and within ten hours the dead and wounded were
+brought along through the tunnel over the spot where the figure had
+stood.&#8221;
+<p>
+A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my best against it.
+It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable
+coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his mind.  But it was
+unquestionable that remarkable coincidences did continually occur,
+and they must be taken into account in dealing with such a subject.
+Though to be sure I must admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he
+was going to bring the objection to bear upon me), men of common
+sense did not allow much for coincidences in making the ordinary
+calculations of life.
+<p>
+He again begged to remark that he had not finished.
+<p>
+I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into interruptions.
+<p>
+&#8220;This,&#8221; he said, again laying his hand upon my arm, and glancing
+over his shoulder with hollow eyes, &#8220;was just a year ago.  Six or
+seven months passed, and I had recovered from the surprise and
+shock, when one morning, as the day was breaking, I, standing at the
+door, looked towards the red light, and saw the spectre again.&#8221;  He
+stopped, with a fixed look at me.
+<p>
+&#8220;Did it cry out?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;No.  It was silent.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Did it wave its arm?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;No.  It leaned against the shaft of the light, with both hands
+before the face.  Like this.&#8221;
+<p>
+Once more I followed his action with my eyes.  It was an action of
+mourning.  I have seen such an attitude in stone figures on tombs.
+<p>
+&#8220;Did you go up to it?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;I came in and sat down, partly to collect my thoughts, partly
+because it had turned me faint.  When I went to the door again,
+daylight was above me, and the ghost was gone.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;But nothing followed?  Nothing came of this?&#8221;
+<p>
+He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice giving
+a ghastly nod each time:&#8212;
+<p>
+&#8220;That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I noticed, at a
+carriage window on my side, what looked like a confusion of hands
+and heads, and something waved.  I saw it just in time to signal the
+driver, Stop!  He shut off, and put his brake on, but the train
+drifted past here a hundred and fifty yards or more.  I ran after
+it, and, as I went along, heard terrible screams and cries.  A
+beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in one of the
+compartments, and was brought in here, and laid down on this floor
+between us.&#8221;
+<p>
+Involuntarily I pushed my chair back, as I looked from the boards at
+which he pointed to himself.
+<p>
+&#8220;True, sir.  True.  Precisely as it happened, so I tell it you.&#8221;
+<p>
+I could think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was
+very dry.  The wind and the wires took up the story with a long
+lamenting wail.
+<p>
+He resumed.  &#8220;Now, sir, mark this, and judge how my mind is
+troubled.  The spectre came back a week ago.  Ever since, it has
+been there, now and again, by fits and starts.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;At the light?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;At the Danger-light.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;What does it seem to do?&#8221;
+<p>
+He repeated, if possible with increased passion and vehemence, that
+former gesticulation of, &#8220;For God&#8217;s sake, clear the way!&#8221;
+<p>
+Then he went on.  &#8220;I have no peace or rest for it.  It calls to me,
+for many minutes together, in an agonised manner, &#8216;Below there!
+Look out!  Look out!&#8217;  It stands waving to me.  It rings my little
+bell&#8212;&#8221;
+<p>
+I caught at that.  &#8220;Did it ring your bell yesterday evening when I
+was here, and you went to the door?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Twice.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Why, see,&#8221; said I, &#8220;how your imagination misleads you.  My eyes
+were on the bell, and my ears were open to the bell, and if I am a
+living man, it did <small>NOT</small> ring at those times.  No, nor at any other
+time, except when it was rung in the natural course of physical
+things by the station communicating with you.&#8221;
+<p>
+He shook his head. &#8220;I have never made a mistake as to that yet, sir.
+I have never confused the spectre&#8217;s ring with the man&#8217;s.  The
+ghost&#8217;s ring is a strange vibration in the bell that it derives from
+nothing else, and I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the
+eye.  I don&#8217;t wonder that you failed to hear it.  But <i>I</i> heard it.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;And did the spectre seem to be there, when you looked out?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;It <small>WAS</small> there.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Both times?&#8221;
+<p>
+He repeated firmly:  &#8220;Both times.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Will you come to the door with me, and look for it now?&#8221;
+<p>
+He bit his under lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but
+arose.  I opened the door, and stood on the step, while he stood in
+the doorway.  There was the Danger-light.  There was the dismal
+mouth of the tunnel.  There were the high, wet stone walls of the
+cutting.  There were the stars above them.
+<p>
+&#8220;Do you see it?&#8221; I asked him, taking particular note of his face.
+His eyes were prominent and strained, but not very much more so,
+perhaps, than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly
+towards the same spot.
+<p>
+&#8220;No,&#8221; he answered.  &#8220;It is not there.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Agreed,&#8221; said I.
+<p>
+We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats.  I was
+thinking how best to improve this advantage, if it might be called
+one, when he took up the conversation in such a matter-of-course
+way, so assuming that there could be no serious question of fact
+between us, that I felt myself placed in the weakest of positions.
+<p>
+&#8220;By this time you will fully understand, sir,&#8221; he said, &#8220;that what
+troubles me so dreadfully is the question, What does the spectre
+mean?&#8221;
+<p>
+I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand.
+<p>
+&#8220;What is its warning against?&#8221; he said, ruminating, with his eyes on
+the fire, and only by times turning them on me.  &#8220;What is the
+danger?  Where is the danger?  There is danger overhanging somewhere
+on the Line.  Some dreadful calamity will happen.  It is not to be
+doubted this third time, after what has gone before.  But surely
+this is a cruel haunting of <i>me</i>.  What can <i>I</i> do?&#8221;
+<p>
+He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated
+forehead.
+<p>
+&#8220;If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on both, I can give
+no reason for it,&#8221; he went on, wiping the palms of his hands.  &#8220;I
+should get into trouble, and do no good.  They would think I was
+mad.  This is the way it would work,&#8212;Message:  &#8216;Danger!  Take
+care!&#8217;  Answer:  &#8216;What Danger?  Where?&#8217;  Message:  &#8216;Don&#8217;t know.
+But, for God&#8217;s sake, take care!&#8217;  They would displace me.  What else
+could they do?&#8221;
+<p>
+His pain of mind was most pitiable to see.  It was the mental
+torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an
+unintelligible responsibility involving life.
+<p>
+&#8220;When it first stood under the Danger-light,&#8221; he went on, putting
+his dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward
+across and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress,
+&#8220;why not tell me where that accident was to happen,&#8212;if it must
+happen?  Why not tell me how it could be averted,&#8212;if it could have
+been averted?  When on its second coming it hid its face, why not
+tell me, instead, &#8216;She is going to die.  Let them keep her at home&#8217;?
+If it came, on those two occasions, only to show me that its
+warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the third, why not warn
+me plainly now?  And I, Lord help me!  A mere poor signal-man on
+this solitary station!  Why not go to somebody with credit to be
+believed, and power to act?&#8221;
+<p>
+When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man&#8217;s sake, as
+well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to
+compose his mind.  Therefore, setting aside all question of reality
+or unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever
+thoroughly discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it
+was his comfort that he understood his duty, though he did not
+understand these confounding Appearances.  In this effort I
+succeeded far better than in the attempt to reason him out of his
+conviction.  He became calm; the occupations incidental to his post
+as the night advanced began to make larger demands on his attention:
+and I left him at two in the morning.  I had offered to stay through
+the night, but he would not hear of it.
+<p>
+That I more than once looked back at the red light as I ascended the
+pathway, that I did not like the red light, and that I should have
+slept but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see no reason to
+conceal.  Nor did I like the two sequences of the accident and the
+dead girl.  I see no reason to conceal that either.
+<p>
+But what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how ought I
+to act, having become the recipient of this disclosure?  I had
+proved the man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact;
+but how long might he remain so, in his state of mind?  Though in a
+subordinate position, still he held a most important trust, and
+would I (for instance) like to stake my own life on the chances of
+his continuing to execute it with precision?
+<p>
+Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something
+treacherous in my communicating what he had told me to his superiors
+in the Company, without first being plain with himself and proposing
+a middle course to him, I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany
+him (otherwise keeping his secret for the present) to the wisest
+medical practitioner we could hear of in those parts, and to take
+his opinion.  A change in his time of duty would come round next
+night, he had apprised me, and he would be off an hour or two after
+sunrise, and on again soon after sunset.  I had appointed to return
+accordingly.
+<p>
+Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to enjoy
+it.  The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the field-path
+near the top of the deep cutting.  I would extend my walk for an
+hour, I said to myself, half an hour on and half an hour back, and
+it would then be time to go to my signal-man&#8217;s box.
+<p>
+Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically
+looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him.  I
+cannot describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the
+mouth of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left
+sleeve across his eyes, passionately waving his right arm.
+<p>
+The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a
+moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and
+that there was a little group of other men, standing at a short
+distance, to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made.
+The Danger-light was not yet lighted.  Against its shaft, a little
+low hut, entirely new to me, had been made of some wooden supports
+and tarpaulin.  It looked no bigger than a bed.
+<p>
+With an irresistible sense that something was wrong,&#8212;with a
+flashing self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of my
+leaving the man there, and causing no one to be sent to overlook or
+correct what he did,&#8212;I descended the notched path with all the
+speed I could make.
+<p>
+&#8220;What is the matter?&#8221; I asked the men.
+<p>
+&#8220;Signal-man killed this morning, sir.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Not the man belonging to that box?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Yes, sir.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Not the man I know?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;You will recognise him, sir, if you knew him,&#8221; said the man who
+spoke for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head, and raising
+an end of the tarpaulin, &#8220;for his face is quite composed.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;O, how did this happen, how did this happen?&#8221; I asked, turning from
+one to another as the hut closed in again.
+<p>
+&#8220;He was cut down by an engine, sir.  No man in England knew his work
+better.  But somehow he was not clear of the outer rail.  It was
+just at broad day.  He had struck the light, and had the lamp in his
+hand.  As the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was towards
+her, and she cut him down.  That man drove her, and was showing how
+it happened.  Show the gentleman, Tom.&#8221;
+<p>
+The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former
+place at the mouth of the tunnel.
+<p>
+&#8220;Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir,&#8221; he said, &#8220;I saw him at
+the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass.  There was
+no time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful.  As he
+didn&#8217;t seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were
+running down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;What did you say?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;I said, &#8216;Below there!  Look out!  Look out!  For God&#8217;s sake, clear
+the way!&#8217;�&#8221;
+<p>
+I started.
+<p>
+&#8220;Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir.  I never left off calling to him.
+I put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to
+the last; but it was no use.&#8221;
+<br><br><p>
+
+Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious
+circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing it, point
+out the coincidence that the warning of the Engine-Driver included,
+not only the words which the unfortunate Signal-man had repeated to
+me as haunting him, but also the words which I myself&#8212;not he&#8212;had
+attached, and that only in my own mind, to the gesticulation he had
+imitated.
+<br><br><hr><br>
+<center><h2><a name="2">THE HAUNTED HOUSE</a></h2></center>
+<p align="center"><br>
+<b>CHAPTER I&#8212;THE MORTALS IN THE HOUSE</b>
+
+<p><br>
+<big><big>U</big></big>NDER none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by
+none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make
+acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas
+piece.  I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it.  There was
+no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted
+circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect.  More than that:
+I had come to it direct from a railway station:  it was not more
+than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I stood
+outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see
+the goods train running smoothly along the embankment in the valley.
+I will not say that everything was utterly commonplace, because I
+doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly commonplace people&#8212;and
+there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on myself to say
+that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn
+morning.
+<p>
+The manner of my lighting on it was this.
+<p>
+I was travelling towards London out of the North, intending to stop
+by the way, to look at the house.  My health required a temporary
+residence in the country; and a friend of mine who knew that, and
+who had happened to drive past the house, had written to me to
+suggest it as a likely place.  I had got into the train at midnight,
+and had fallen asleep, and had woke up and had sat looking out of
+window at the brilliant Northern Lights in the sky, and had fallen
+asleep again, and had woke up again to find the night gone, with the
+usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn&#8217;t been to sleep at
+all;&#8212;upon which question, in the first imbecility of that
+condition, I am ashamed to believe that I would have done wager by
+battle with the man who sat opposite me.  That opposite man had had,
+through the night&#8212;as that opposite man always has&#8212;several legs too
+many, and all of them too long.  In addition to this unreasonable
+conduct (which was only to be expected of him), he had had a pencil
+and a pocket-book, and had been perpetually listening and taking
+notes.  It had appeared to me that these aggravating notes related
+to the jolts and bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned
+myself to his taking them, under a general supposition that he was
+in the civil-engineering way of life, if he had not sat staring
+straight over my head whenever he listened.  He was a goggle-eyed
+gentleman of a perplexed aspect, and his demeanour became
+unbearable.
+<p>
+It was a cold, dead morning (the sun not being up yet), and when I
+had out-watched the paling light of the fires of the iron country,
+and the curtain of heavy smoke that hung at once between me and the
+stars and between me and the day, I turned to my fellow-traveller
+and said:
+<p>
+&#8220;I <i>beg</i> your pardon, sir, but do you observe anything particular in
+me?&#8221;  For, really, he appeared to be taking down, either my
+travelling-cap or my hair, with a minuteness that was a liberty.
+<p>
+The goggle-eyed gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as if
+the back of the carriage were a hundred miles off, and said, with a
+lofty look of compassion for my insignificance:
+<p>
+&#8220;In you, sir?&#8212;B.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;B, sir?&#8221; said I, growing warm.
+<p>
+&#8220;I have nothing to do with you, sir,&#8221; returned the gentleman; &#8220;pray
+let me listen&#8212;O.&#8221;
+<p>
+He enunciated this vowel after a pause, and noted it down.
+<p>
+At first I was alarmed, for an Express lunatic and no communication
+with the guard, is a serious position.  The thought came to my
+relief that the gentleman might be what is popularly called a
+Rapper:  one of a sect for (some of) whom I have the highest
+respect, but whom I don&#8217;t believe in.  I was going to ask him the
+question, when he took the bread out of my mouth.
+<p>
+&#8220;You will excuse me,&#8221; said the gentleman contemptuously, &#8220;if I am
+too much in advance of common humanity to trouble myself at all
+about it.  I have passed the night&#8212;as indeed I pass the whole of my
+time now&#8212;in spiritual intercourse.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;O!&#8221; said I, somewhat snappishly.
+<p>
+&#8220;The conferences of the night began,&#8221; continued the gentleman,
+turning several leaves of his note-book, &#8220;with this message:  &#8216;Evil
+communications corrupt good manners.&#8217;�&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Sound,&#8221; said I; &#8220;but, absolutely new?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;New from spirits,&#8221; returned the gentleman.
+<p>
+I could only repeat my rather snappish &#8220;O!&#8221; and ask if I might be
+favoured with the last communication.
+<p>
+&#8220;�&#8216;A bird in the hand,&#8217;�&#8221; said the gentleman, reading his last entry
+with great solemnity, &#8220;�&#8216;is worth two in the Bosh.&#8217;�&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Truly I am of the same opinion,&#8221; said I; &#8220;but shouldn&#8217;t it be
+Bush?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;It came to me, Bosh,&#8221; returned the gentleman.
+<p>
+The gentleman then informed me that the spirit of Socrates had
+delivered this special revelation in the course of the night.  &#8220;My
+friend, I hope you are pretty well.  There are two in this railway
+carriage.  How do you do?  There are seventeen thousand four hundred
+and seventy-nine spirits here, but you cannot see them.  Pythagoras
+is here.  He is not at liberty to mention it, but hopes you like
+travelling.&#8221;  Galileo likewise had dropped in, with this scientific
+intelligence.  &#8220;I am glad to see you, <i>amico. Come sta?</i>  Water will
+freeze when it is cold enough.  <i>Addio!</i>&#8221;  In the course of the night,
+also, the following phenomena had occurred.  Bishop Butler had
+insisted on spelling his name, &#8220;Bubler,&#8221; for which offence against
+orthography and good manners he had been dismissed as out of temper.
+John Milton (suspected of wilful mystification) had repudiated the
+authorship of Paradise Lost, and had introduced, as joint authors of
+that poem, two Unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and
+Scadgingtone.  And Prince Arthur, nephew of King John of England,
+had described himself as tolerably comfortable in the seventh
+circle, where he was learning to paint on velvet, under the
+direction of Mrs. Trimmer and Mary Queen of Scots.
+<p>
+If this should meet the eye of the gentleman who favoured me with
+these disclosures, I trust he will excuse my confessing that the
+sight of the rising sun, and the contemplation of the magnificent
+Order of the vast Universe, made me impatient of them.  In a word, I
+was so impatient of them, that I was mightily glad to get out at the
+next station, and to exchange these clouds and vapours for the free
+air of Heaven.
+<p>
+By that time it was a beautiful morning.  As I walked away among
+such leaves as had already fallen from the golden, brown, and russet
+trees; and as I looked around me on the wonders of Creation, and
+thought of the steady, unchanging, and harmonious laws by which they
+are sustained; the gentleman&#8217;s spiritual intercourse seemed to me as
+poor a piece of journey-work as ever this world saw.  In which
+heathen state of mind, I came within view of the house, and stopped
+to examine it attentively.
+<p>
+It was a solitary house, standing in a sadly neglected garden:  a
+pretty even square of some two acres.  It was a house of about the
+time of George the Second; as stiff, as cold, as formal, and in as
+bad taste, as could possibly be desired by the most loyal admirer of
+the whole quartet of Georges.  It was uninhabited, but had, within a
+year or two, been cheaply repaired to render it habitable; I say
+cheaply, because the work had been done in a surface manner, and was
+already decaying as to the paint and plaster, though the colours
+were fresh.  A lop-sided board drooped over the garden wall,
+announcing that it was &#8220;to let on very reasonable terms, well
+furnished.&#8221;  It was much too closely and heavily shadowed by trees,
+and, in particular, there were six tall poplars before the front
+windows, which were excessively melancholy, and the site of which
+had been extremely ill chosen.
+<p>
+It was easy to see that it was an avoided house&#8212;a house that was
+shunned by the village, to which my eye was guided by a church spire
+some half a mile off&#8212;a house that nobody would take.  And the
+natural inference was, that it had the reputation of being a haunted
+house.
+<p>
+No period within the four-and-twenty hours of day and night is so
+solemn to me, as the early morning.  In the summer time, I often
+rise very early, and repair to my room to do a day&#8217;s work before
+breakfast, and I am always on those occasions deeply impressed by
+the stillness and solitude around me.  Besides that there is
+something awful in the being surrounded by familiar faces asleep&#8212;in
+the knowledge that those who are dearest to us and to whom we are
+dearest, are profoundly unconscious of us, in an impassive state,
+anticipative of that mysterious condition to which we are all
+tending&#8212;the stopped life, the broken threads of yesterday, the
+deserted seat, the closed book, the unfinished but abandoned
+occupation, all are images of Death.  The tranquillity of the hour
+is the tranquillity of Death.  The colour and the chill have the
+same association.  Even a certain air that familiar household
+objects take upon them when they first emerge from the shadows of
+the night into the morning, of being newer, and as they used to be
+long ago, has its counterpart in the subsidence of the worn face of
+maturity or age, in death, into the old youthful look.  Moreover, I
+once saw the apparition of my father, at this hour.  He was alive
+and well, and nothing ever came of it, but I saw him in the
+daylight, sitting with his back towards me, on a seat that stood
+beside my bed.  His head was resting on his hand, and whether he was
+slumbering or grieving, I could not discern.  Amazed to see him
+there, I sat up, moved my position, leaned out of bed, and watched
+him.  As he did not move, I spoke to him more than once.  As he did
+not move then, I became alarmed and laid my hand upon his shoulder,
+as I thought&#8212;and there was no such thing.
+<p>
+For all these reasons, and for others less easily and briefly
+statable, I find the early morning to be my most ghostly time.  Any
+house would be more or less haunted, to me, in the early morning;
+and a haunted house could scarcely address me to greater advantage
+than then.
+<p>
+I walked on into the village, with the desertion of this house upon
+my mind, and I found the landlord of the little inn, sanding his
+door-step.  I bespoke breakfast, and broached the subject of the
+house.
+<p>
+&#8220;Is it haunted?&#8221; I asked.
+<p>
+The landlord looked at me, shook his head, and answered, &#8220;I say
+nothing.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Then it <i>is</i> haunted?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Well!&#8221; cried the landlord, in an outburst of frankness that had the
+appearance of desperation&#8212;&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t sleep in it.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Why not?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;If I wanted to have all the bells in a house ring, with nobody to
+ring &#8217;em; and all the doors in a house bang, with nobody to bang
+&#8217;em; and all sorts of feet treading about, with no feet there; why,
+then,&#8221; said the landlord, &#8220;I&#8217;d sleep in that house.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Is anything seen there?&#8221;
+<p>
+The landlord looked at me again, and then, with his former
+appearance of desperation, called down his stable-yard for &#8220;Ikey!&#8221;
+<p>
+The call produced a high-shouldered young fellow, with a round red
+face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous mouth, a
+turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with
+mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to
+be in a fair way&#8212;if it were not pruned&#8212;of covering his head and
+overunning his boots.
+<p>
+&#8220;This gentleman wants to know,&#8221; said the landlord, &#8220;if anything&#8217;s
+seen at the Poplars.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;�&#8217;Ooded woman with a howl,&#8221; said Ikey, in a state of great
+freshness.
+<p>
+&#8220;Do you mean a cry?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;I mean a bird, sir.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;A hooded woman with an owl.  Dear me!  Did you ever see her?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;I seen the howl.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Never the woman?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Not so plain as the howl, but they always keeps together.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Has anybody ever seen the woman as plainly as the owl?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Lord bless you, sir!  Lots.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Who?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Lord bless you, sir!  Lots.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;The general-dealer opposite, for instance, who is opening his
+shop?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Perkins?  Bless you, Perkins wouldn&#8217;t go a-nigh the place.  No!&#8221;
+observed the young man, with considerable feeling; &#8220;he an&#8217;t
+overwise, an&#8217;t Perkins, but he an&#8217;t such a fool as <i>that</i>.&#8221;
+<p>
+(Here, the landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins&#8217;s knowing
+better.)
+<p>
+&#8220;Who is&#8212;or who was&#8212;the hooded woman with the owl?  Do you know?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Well!&#8221; said Ikey, holding up his cap with one hand while he
+scratched his head with the other, &#8220;they say, in general, that she
+was murdered, and the howl he &#8217;ooted the while.&#8221;
+<p>
+This very concise summary of the facts was all I could learn, except
+that a young man, as hearty and likely a young man as ever I see,
+had been took with fits and held down in &#8217;em, after seeing the
+hooded woman.  Also, that a personage, dimly described as &#8220;a hold
+chap, a sort of one-eyed tramp, answering to the name of Joby,
+unless you challenged him as Greenwood, and then he said, &#8216;Why not?
+and even if so, mind your own business,&#8217;�&#8221; had encountered the hooded
+woman, a matter of five or six times.  But, I was not materially
+assisted by these witnesses:  inasmuch as the first was in
+California, and the last was, as Ikey said (and he was confirmed by
+the landlord), Anywheres.
+<p>
+Now, although I regard with a hushed and solemn fear, the mysteries,
+between which and this state of existence is interposed the barrier
+of the great trial and change that fall on all the things that live;
+and although I have not the audacity to pretend that I know anything
+of them; I can no more reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing
+of bells, creaking of boards, and such-like insignificances, with
+the majestic beauty and pervading analogy of all the Divine rules
+that I am permitted to understand, than I had been able, a little
+while before, to yoke the spiritual intercourse of my fellow-traveller
+to the chariot of the rising sun.  Moreover, I had lived
+in two haunted houses&#8212;both abroad.  In one of these, an old Italian
+palace, which bore the reputation of being very badly haunted
+indeed, and which had recently been twice abandoned on that account,
+I lived eight months, most tranquilly and pleasantly:
+notwithstanding that the house had a score of mysterious bedrooms,
+which were never used, and possessed, in one large room in which I
+sat reading, times out of number at all hours, and next to which I
+slept, a haunted chamber of the first pretensions.  I gently hinted
+these considerations to the landlord.  And as to this particular
+house having a bad name, I reasoned with him, Why, how many things
+had bad names undeservedly, and how easy it was to give bad names,
+and did he not think that if he and I were persistently to whisper
+in the village that any weird-looking, old drunken tinker of the
+neighbourhood had sold himself to the Devil, he would come in time
+to be suspected of that commercial venture!  All this wise talk was
+perfectly ineffective with the landlord, I am bound to confess, and
+was as dead a failure as ever I made in my life.
+<p>
+To cut this part of the story short, I was piqued about the haunted
+house, and was already half resolved to take it.  So, after
+breakfast, I got the keys from Perkins&#8217;s brother-in-law (a whip and
+harness maker, who keeps the Post Office, and is under submission to
+a most rigorous wife of the Doubly Seceding Little Emmanuel
+persuasion), and went up to the house, attended by my landlord and
+by Ikey.
+<p>
+Within, I found it, as I had expected, transcendently dismal.  The
+slowly changing shadows waved on it from the heavy trees, were
+doleful in the last degree; the house was ill-placed, ill-built,
+ill-planned, and ill-fitted.  It was damp, it was not free from dry
+rot, there was a flavour of rats in it, and it was the gloomy victim
+of that indescribable decay which settles on all the work of man&#8217;s
+hands whenever it&#8217;s not turned to man&#8217;s account.  The kitchens and
+offices were too large, and too remote from each other.  Above
+stairs and below, waste tracts of passage intervened between patches
+of fertility represented by rooms; and there was a mouldy old well
+with a green growth upon it, hiding like a murderous trap, near the
+bottom of the back-stairs, under the double row of bells.  One of
+these bells was labelled, on a black ground in faded white letters,
+M<small>ASTER</small>�B.  This, they told me, was the bell that rang the most.
+<p>
+&#8220;Who was Master�B.?&#8221; I asked.  &#8220;Is it known what he did while the
+owl hooted?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Rang the bell,&#8221; said Ikey.
+<p>
+I was rather struck by the prompt dexterity with which this young
+man pitched his fur cap at the bell, and rang it himself.  It was a
+loud, unpleasant bell, and made a very disagreeable sound.  The
+other bells were inscribed according to the names of the rooms to
+which their wires were conducted:  as &#8220;Picture Room,&#8221; &#8220;Double Room,&#8221;
+&#8220;Clock Room,&#8221; and the like.  Following Master�B.&#8217;s bell to its
+source I found that young gentleman to have had but indifferent
+third-class accommodation in a triangular cabin under the cock-loft,
+with a corner fireplace which Master�B. must have been exceedingly
+small if he were ever able to warm himself at, and a corner chimney-piece
+like a pyramidal staircase to the ceiling for Tom Thumb.  The
+papering of one side of the room had dropped down bodily, with
+fragments of plaster adhering to it, and almost blocked up the door.
+It appeared that Master�B., in his spiritual condition, always made
+a point of pulling the paper down.  Neither the landlord nor Ikey
+could suggest why he made such a fool of himself.
+<p>
+Except that the house had an immensely large rambling loft at top, I
+made no other discoveries.  It was moderately well furnished, but
+sparely.  Some of the furniture&#8212;say, a third&#8212;was as old as the
+house; the rest was of various periods within the last half century.
+I was referred to a corn-chandler in the market-place of the county
+town to treat for the house.  I went that day, and I took it for six
+months.
+<p>
+It was just the middle of October when I moved in with my maiden
+sister (I venture to call her eight-and-thirty, she is so very
+handsome, sensible, and engaging).  We took with us, a deaf stable-man,
+my bloodhound Turk, two women servants, and a young person
+called an Odd Girl.  I have reason to record of the attendant last
+enumerated, who was one of the Saint Lawrence&#8217;s Union Female
+Orphans, that she was a fatal mistake and a disastrous engagement.
+<p>
+The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was a raw
+cold day when we took possession, and the gloom of the house was
+most depressing.  The cook (an amiable woman, but of a weak turn of
+intellect) burst into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested
+that her silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2
+Tuppintock&#8217;s Gardens, Liggs&#8217;s Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of
+anything happening to her from the damp.  Streaker, the housemaid,
+feigned cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr.  The Odd Girl, who
+had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and made
+arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery
+window, and rearing an oak.
+<p>
+We went, before dark, through all the natural&#8212;as opposed to
+supernatural&#8212;miseries incidental to our state.  Dispiriting reports
+ascended (like the smoke) from the basement in volumes, and
+descended from the upper rooms.  There was no rolling-pin, there was
+no salamander (which failed to surprise me, for I don&#8217;t know what it
+is), there was nothing in the house, what there was, was broken, the
+last people must have lived like pigs, what could the meaning of the
+landlord be?  Through these distresses, the Odd Girl was cheerful
+and exemplary.  But within four hours after dark we had got into a
+supernatural groove, and the Odd Girl had seen &#8220;Eyes,&#8221; and was in
+hysterics.
+<p>
+My sister and I had agreed to keep the haunting strictly to
+ourselves, and my impression was, and still is, that I had not left
+Ikey, when he helped to unload the cart, alone with the women, or
+any one of them, for one minute.  Nevertheless, as I say, the Odd
+Girl had &#8220;seen Eyes&#8221; (no other explanation could ever be drawn from
+her), before nine, and by ten o&#8217;clock had had as much vinegar
+applied to her as would pickle a handsome salmon.
+<p>
+I leave a discerning public to judge of my feelings, when, under
+these untoward circumstances, at about half-past ten o&#8217;clock Master
+B.&#8217;s bell began to ring in a most infuriated manner, and Turk howled
+until the house resounded with his lamentations!
+<p>
+I hope I may never again be in a state of mind so unchristian as the
+mental frame in which I lived for some weeks, respecting the memory
+of Master�B.  Whether his bell was rung by rats, or mice, or bats,
+or wind, or what other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one
+cause, sometimes another, and sometimes by collusion, I don&#8217;t know;
+but, certain it is, that it did ring two nights out of three, until
+I conceived the happy idea of twisting Master�B.&#8217;s neck&#8212;in other
+words, breaking his bell short off&#8212;and silencing that young
+gentleman, as to my experience and belief, for ever.
+<p>
+But, by that time, the Odd Girl had developed such improving powers
+of catalepsy, that she had become a shining example of that very
+inconvenient disorder.  She would stiffen, like a Guy Fawkes endowed
+with unreason, on the most irrelevant occasions.  I would address
+the servants in a lucid manner, pointing out to them that I had
+painted Master�B.&#8217;s room and balked the paper, and taken Master�B.&#8217;s
+bell away and balked the ringing, and if they could suppose that
+that confounded boy had lived and died, to clothe himself with no
+better behaviour than would most unquestionably have brought him and
+the sharpest particles of a birch-broom into close acquaintance in
+the present imperfect state of existence, could they also suppose a
+mere poor human being, such as I was, capable by those contemptible
+means of counteracting and limiting the powers of the disembodied
+spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?&#8212;I say I would become
+emphatic and cogent, not to say rather complacent, in such an
+address, when it would all go for nothing by reason of the Odd
+Girl&#8217;s suddenly stiffening from the toes upward, and glaring among
+us like a parochial petrifaction.
+<p>
+Streaker, the housemaid, too, had an attribute of a most
+discomfiting nature.  I am unable to say whether she was of an
+unusually lymphatic temperament, or what else was the matter with her,
+but this young woman became a mere Distillery for the production of
+the largest and most transparent tears I ever met with.  Combined
+with these characteristics, was a peculiar tenacity of hold in those
+specimens, so that they didn&#8217;t fall, but hung upon her face and
+nose.  In this condition, and mildly and deplorably shaking her
+head, her silence would throw me more heavily than the Admirable
+Crichton could have done in a verbal disputation for a purse of
+money.  Cook, likewise, always covered me with confusion as with a
+garment, by neatly winding up the session with the protest that the
+Ouse was wearing her out, and by meekly repeating her last wishes
+regarding her silver watch.
+<p>
+As to our nightly life, the contagion of suspicion and fear was
+among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky.  Hooded
+woman?  According to the accounts, we were in a perfect Convent of
+hooded women.  Noises?  With that contagion downstairs, I myself
+have sat in the dismal parlour, listening, until I have heard so
+many and such strange noises, that they would have chilled my blood
+if I had not warmed it by dashing out to make discoveries.  Try this
+in bed, in the dead of the night:  try this at your own comfortable
+fire-side, in the life of the night.  You can fill any house with
+noises, if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in your
+nervous system.
+<p>
+I repeat; the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and
+there is no such contagion under the sky.  The women (their noses in
+a chronic state of excoriation from smelling-salts) were always
+primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready to go off with
+hair-triggers.  The two elder detached the Odd Girl on all expeditions
+that were considered doubly hazardous, and she always established
+the reputation of such adventures by coming back cataleptic.  If
+Cook or Streaker went overhead after dark, we knew we should
+presently hear a bump on the ceiling; and this took place so
+constantly, that it was as if a fighting man were engaged to go
+about the house, administering a touch of his art which I believe is
+called The Auctioneer, to every domestic he met with.
+<p>
+It was in vain to do anything.  It was in vain to be frightened, for
+the moment in one&#8217;s own person, by a real owl, and then to show the
+owl.  It was in vain to discover, by striking an accidental discord
+on the piano, that Turk always howled at particular notes and
+combinations.  It was in vain to be a Rhadamanthus with the bells,
+and if an unfortunate bell rang without leave, to have it down
+inexorably and silence it.  It was in vain to fire up chimneys, let
+torches down the well, charge furiously into suspected rooms and
+recesses.  We changed servants, and it was no better.  The new set
+ran away, and a third set came, and it was no better.  At last, our
+comfortable housekeeping got to be so disorganised and wretched,
+that I one night dejectedly said to my sister:  &#8220;Patty, I begin to
+despair of our getting people to go on with us here, and I think we
+must give this up.&#8221;
+<p>
+My sister, who is a woman of immense spirit, replied, &#8220;No, John,
+don&#8217;t give it up.  Don&#8217;t be beaten, John.  There is another way.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;And what is that?&#8221; said I.
+<p>
+&#8220;John,&#8221; returned my sister, &#8220;if we are not to be driven out of this
+house, and that for no reason whatever that is apparent to you or
+me, we must help ourselves and take the house wholly and solely into
+our own hands.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;But, the servants,&#8221; said I.
+<p>
+&#8220;Have no servants,&#8221; said my sister, boldly.
+<p>
+Like most people in my grade of life, I had never thought of the
+possibility of going on without those faithful obstructions.  The
+notion was so new to me when suggested, that I looked very doubtful.
+<p>
+&#8220;We know they come here to be frightened and infect one another, and
+we know they are frightened and do infect one another,&#8221; said my
+sister.
+<p>
+&#8220;With the exception of Bottles,&#8221; I observed, in a meditative tone.
+<p>
+(The deaf stable-man.  I kept him in my service, and still keep him,
+as a phenomenon of moroseness not to be matched in England.)
+<p>
+&#8220;To be sure, John,&#8221; assented my sister; &#8220;except Bottles.  And what
+does that go to prove?  Bottles talks to nobody, and hears nobody
+unless he is absolutely roared at, and what alarm has Bottles ever
+given, or taken!  None.&#8221;
+<p>
+This was perfectly true; the individual in question having retired,
+every night at ten o&#8217;clock, to his bed over the coach-house, with no
+other company than a pitchfork and a pail of water.  That the pail
+of water would have been over me, and the pitchfork through me, if I
+had put myself without announcement in Bottles&#8217;s way after that
+minute, I had deposited in my own mind as a fact worth remembering.
+Neither had Bottles ever taken the least notice of any of our many
+uproars.  An imperturbable and speechless man, he had sat at his
+supper, with Streaker present in a swoon, and the Odd Girl marble,
+and had only put another potato in his cheek, or profited by the
+general misery to help himself to beefsteak pie.
+<p>
+&#8220;And so,&#8221; continued my sister, &#8220;I exempt Bottles.  And considering,
+John, that the house is too large, and perhaps too lonely, to be
+kept well in hand by Bottles, you, and me, I propose that we cast
+about among our friends for a certain selected number of the most
+reliable and willing&#8212;form a Society here for three months&#8212;wait
+upon ourselves and one another&#8212;live cheerfully and socially&#8212;and
+see what happens.&#8221;
+<p>
+I was so charmed with my sister, that I embraced her on the spot,
+and went into her plan with the greatest ardour.
+<p>
+We were then in the third week of November; but, we took our
+measures so vigorously, and were so well seconded by the friends in
+whom we confided, that there was still a week of the month
+unexpired, when our party all came down together merrily, and
+mustered in the haunted house.
+<p>
+I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I made while
+my sister and I were yet alone.  It occurring to me as not
+improbable that Turk howled in the house at night, partly because he
+wanted to get out of it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but
+unchained; and I seriously warned the village that any man who came
+in his way must not expect to leave him without a rip in his own
+throat.  I then casually asked Ikey if he were a judge of a gun?  On
+his saying, &#8220;Yes, sir, I knows a good gun when I sees her,&#8221; I begged
+the favour of his stepping up to the house and looking at mine.
+<p>
+&#8220;<i>She&#8217;s</i> a true one, sir,&#8221; said Ikey, after inspecting a
+double-barrelled rifle that I bought in New York a few years ago.  &#8220;No
+mistake about <i>her</i>, sir.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Ikey,&#8221; said I, &#8220;don&#8217;t mention it; I have seen something in this
+house.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;No, sir?&#8221; he whispered, greedily opening his eyes.  &#8220;�&#8217;Ooded lady,
+sir?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Don&#8217;t be frightened,&#8221; said I.  &#8220;It was a figure rather like you.&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Lord, sir?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Ikey!&#8221; said I, shaking hands with him warmly:  I may say
+affectionately; &#8220;if there is any truth in these ghost-stories, the
+greatest service I can do you, is, to fire at that figure.  And I
+promise you, by Heaven and earth, I will do it with this gun if I
+see it again!&#8221;
+<p>
+The young man thanked me, and took his leave with some little
+precipitation, after declining a glass of liquor.  I imparted my
+secret to him, because I had never quite forgotten his throwing his
+cap at the bell; because I had, on another occasion, noticed
+something very like a fur cap, lying not far from the bell, one
+night when it had burst out ringing; and because I had remarked that
+we were at our ghostliest whenever he came up in the evening to
+comfort the servants.  Let me do Ikey no injustice.  He was afraid
+of the house, and believed in its being haunted; and yet he would
+play false on the haunting side, so surely as he got an opportunity.
+The Odd Girl&#8217;s case was exactly similar.  She went about the house
+in a state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously and wilfully,
+and invented many of the alarms she spread, and made many of the
+sounds we heard.  I had had my eye on the two, and I know it.  It is
+not necessary for me, here, to account for this preposterous state
+of mind; I content myself with remarking that it is familiarly known
+to every intelligent man who has had fair medical, legal, or other
+watchful experience; that it is as well established and as common a
+state of mind as any with which observers are acquainted; and that
+it is one of the first elements, above all others, rationally to be
+suspected in, and strictly looked for, and separated from, any
+question of this kind.
+<p>
+To return to our party.  The first thing we did when we were all
+assembled, was, to draw lots for bedrooms.  That done, and every
+bedroom, and, indeed, the whole house, having been minutely examined
+by the whole body, we allotted the various household duties, as if
+we had been on a gipsy party, or a yachting party, or a hunting
+party, or were shipwrecked.  I then recounted the floating rumours
+concerning the hooded lady, the owl, and Master�B.:  with others,
+still more filmy, which had floated about during our occupation,
+relative to some ridiculous old ghost of the female gender who went
+up and down, carrying the ghost of a round table; and also to an
+impalpable Jackass, whom nobody was ever able to catch.  Some of
+these ideas I really believe our people below had communicated to
+one another in some diseased way, without conveying them in words.
+We then gravely called one another to witness, that we were not
+there to be deceived, or to deceive&#8212;which we considered pretty much
+the same thing&#8212;and that, with a serious sense of responsibility, we
+would be strictly true to one another, and would strictly follow out
+the truth.  The understanding was established, that any one who
+heard unusual noises in the night, and who wished to trace them,
+should knock at my door; lastly, that on Twelfth Night, the last
+night of holy Christmas, all our individual experiences since that
+then present hour of our coming together in the haunted house,
+should be brought to light for the good of all; and that we would
+hold our peace on the subject till then, unless on some remarkable
+provocation to break silence.
+<p>
+We were, in number and in character, as follows:
+<p>
+First&#8212;to get my sister and myself out of the way&#8212;there were we
+two.  In the drawing of lots, my sister drew her own room, and I
+drew Master�B.&#8217;s.  Next, there was our first cousin John Herschel,
+so called after the great astronomer:  than whom I suppose a better
+man at a telescope does not breathe.  With him, was his wife:  a
+charming creature to whom he had been married in the previous
+spring.  I thought it (under the circumstances) rather imprudent to
+bring her, because there is no knowing what even a false alarm may
+do at such a time; but I suppose he knew his own business best, and
+I must say that if she had been <i>my</i> wife, I never could have left her
+endearing and bright face behind.  They drew the Clock Room.  Alfred
+Starling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight-and-twenty
+for whom I have the greatest liking, was in the Double Room; mine,
+usually, and designated by that name from having a dressing-room
+within it, with two large and cumbersome windows, which no wedges <i>I</i>
+was ever able to make, would keep from shaking, in any weather, wind
+or no wind.  Alfred is a young fellow who pretends to be &#8220;fast&#8221;
+(another word for loose, as I understand the term), but who is much
+too good and sensible for that nonsense, and who would have
+distinguished himself before now, if his father had not
+unfortunately left him a small independence of two hundred a year,
+on the strength of which his only occupation in life has been to
+spend six.  I am in hopes, however, that his Banker may break, or
+that he may enter into some speculation guaranteed to pay twenty per
+cent.; for, I am convinced that if he could only be ruined, his
+fortune is made.  Belinda Bates, bosom friend of my sister, and a
+most intellectual, amiable, and delightful girl, got the Picture
+Room.  She has a fine genius for poetry, combined with real business
+earnestness, and &#8220;goes in&#8221;&#8212;to use an expression of Alfred&#8217;s&#8212;for
+Woman&#8217;s mission, Woman&#8217;s rights, Woman&#8217;s wrongs, and everything that
+is woman&#8217;s with a capital W, or is not and ought to be, or is and
+ought not to be.  &#8220;Most praiseworthy, my dear, and Heaven prosper
+you!&#8221; I whispered to her on the first night of my taking leave of
+her at the Picture-Room door, &#8220;but don&#8217;t overdo it.  And in respect
+of the great necessity there is, my darling, for more employments
+being within the reach of Woman than our civilisation has as yet
+assigned to her, don&#8217;t fly at the unfortunate men, even those men
+who are at first sight in your way, as if they were the natural
+oppressors of your sex; for, trust me, Belinda, they do sometimes
+spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters, mothers,
+aunts, and grandmothers; and the play is, really, not <i>all</i> Wolf and
+Red Riding-Hood, but has other parts in it.&#8221;  However, I digress.
+<p>
+Belinda, as I have mentioned, occupied the Picture Room.  We had but
+three other chambers:  the Corner Room, the Cupboard Room, and the
+Garden Room.  My old friend, Jack Governor, &#8220;slung his hammock,&#8221; as
+he called it, in the Corner Room.  I have always regarded Jack as
+the finest-looking sailor that ever sailed.  He is gray now, but as
+handsome as he was a quarter of a century ago&#8212;nay, handsomer.  A
+portly, cheery, well-built figure of a broad-shouldered man, with a
+frank smile, a brilliant dark eye, and a rich dark eyebrow.  I
+remember those under darker hair, and they look all the better for
+their silver setting.  He has been wherever his Union namesake
+flies, has Jack, and I have met old shipmates of his, away in the
+Mediterranean and on the other side of the Atlantic, who have beamed
+and brightened at the casual mention of his name, and have cried,
+&#8220;You know Jack Governor?  Then you know a prince of men!&#8221;  That he
+is!  And so unmistakably a naval officer, that if you were to meet
+him coming out of an Esquimaux snow-hut in seal&#8217;s skin, you would be
+vaguely persuaded he was in full naval uniform.
+<p>
+Jack once had that bright clear eye of his on my sister; but, it
+fell out that he married another lady and took her to South America,
+where she died.  This was a dozen years ago or more.  He brought
+down with him to our haunted house a little cask of salt beef; for,
+he is always convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling,
+is mere carrion, and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a
+piece in his portmanteau.  He had also volunteered to bring with him
+one &#8220;Nat Beaver,&#8221; an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantman.
+Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face and figure, and apparently
+as hard as a block all over, proved to be an intelligent man, with a
+world of watery experiences in him, and great practical knowledge.
+At times, there was a curious nervousness about him, apparently the
+lingering result of some old illness; but, it seldom lasted many
+minutes.  He got the Cupboard Room, and lay there next to Mr.
+Undery, my friend and solicitor:  who came down, in an amateur
+capacity, &#8220;to go through with it,&#8221; as he said, and who plays whist
+better than the whole Law List, from the red cover at the beginning
+to the red cover at the end.
+<p>
+I never was happier in my life, and I believe it was the universal
+feeling among us.  Jack Governor, always a man of wonderful
+resources, was Chief Cook, and made some of the best dishes I ever
+ate, including unapproachable curries.  My sister was pastrycook and
+confectioner.  Starling and I were Cook&#8217;s Mate, turn and turn about,
+and on special occasions the chief cook &#8220;pressed&#8221; Mr. Beaver.  We
+had a great deal of out-door sport and exercise, but nothing was
+neglected within, and there was no ill-humour or misunderstanding
+among us, and our evenings were so delightful that we had at least
+one good reason for being reluctant to go to bed.
+<p>
+We had a few night alarms in the beginning.  On the first night, I
+was knocked up by Jack with a most wonderful ship&#8217;s lantern in his
+hand, like the gills of some monster of the deep, who informed me
+that he &#8220;was going aloft to the main truck,&#8221; to have the weathercock
+down.  It was a stormy night and I remonstrated; but Jack called my
+attention to its making a sound like a cry of despair, and said
+somebody would be &#8220;hailing a ghost&#8221; presently, if it wasn&#8217;t done.
+So, up to the top of the house, where I could hardly stand for the
+wind, we went, accompanied by Mr. Beaver; and there Jack, lantern
+and all, with Mr. Beaver after him, swarmed up to the top of a
+cupola, some two dozen feet above the chimneys, and stood upon
+nothing particular, coolly knocking the weathercock off, until they
+both got into such good spirits with the wind and the height, that I
+thought they would never come down.  Another night, they turned out
+again, and had a chimney-cowl off.  Another night, they cut a
+sobbing and gulping water-pipe away.  Another night, they found out
+something else.  On several occasions, they both, in the coolest
+manner, simultaneously dropped out of their respective bedroom
+windows, hand over hand by their counterpanes, to &#8220;overhaul&#8221;
+something mysterious in the garden.
+<p>
+The engagement among us was faithfully kept, and nobody revealed
+anything.  All we knew was, if any one&#8217;s room were haunted, no one
+looked the worse for it.
+<center><br><hr width="150"><br>
+<b>CHAPTER II&#8212;THE GHOST IN MASTER B.&#8217;S ROOM</b></center>
+
+<p><br>
+<big><big>W</big></big>HEN I established myself in the triangular garret which had gained
+so distinguished a reputation, my thoughts naturally turned to
+Master�B.  My speculations about him were uneasy and manifold.
+Whether his Christian name was Benjamin, Bissextile (from his having
+been born in Leap Year), Bartholomew, or Bill.  Whether the initial
+letter belonged to his family name, and that was Baxter, Black,
+Brown, Barker, Buggins, Baker, or Bird.  Whether he was a foundling,
+and had been baptized B.  Whether he was a lion-hearted boy, and B.
+was short for Briton, or for Bull.  Whether he could possibly have
+been kith and kin to an illustrious lady who brightened my own
+childhood, and had come of the blood of the brilliant Mother Bunch?
+<p>
+With these profitless meditations I tormented myself much.  I also
+carried the mysterious letter into the appearance and pursuits of
+the deceased; wondering whether he dressed in Blue, wore Boots (he
+couldn&#8217;t have been Bald), was a boy of Brains, liked Books, was good
+at Bowling, had any skill as a Boxer, even in his Buoyant Boyhood
+Bathed from a Bathing-machine at Bognor, Bangor, Bournemouth,
+Brighton, or Broadstairs, like a Bounding Billiard Ball?
+<p>
+So, from the first, I was haunted by the letter B.
+<p>
+It was not long before I remarked that I never by any hazard had a
+dream of Master�B., or of anything belonging to him.  But, the
+instant I awoke from sleep, at whatever hour of the night, my
+thoughts took him up, and roamed away, trying to attach his initial
+letter to something that would fit it and keep it quiet.
+<p>
+For six nights, I had been worried thus in Master�B.&#8217;s room, when I
+began to perceive that things were going wrong.
+<p>
+The first appearance that presented itself was early in the morning
+when it was but just daylight and no more.  I was standing shaving
+at my glass, when I suddenly discovered, to my consternation and
+amazement, that I was shaving&#8212;not myself&#8212;I am fifty&#8212;but a boy.
+Apparently Master�B.!
+<p>
+I trembled and looked over my shoulder; nothing there.  I looked
+again in the glass, and distinctly saw the features and expression
+of a boy, who was shaving, not to get rid of a beard, but to get
+one.  Extremely troubled in my mind, I took a few turns in the room,
+and went back to the looking-glass, resolved to steady my hand and
+complete the operation in which I had been disturbed.  Opening my
+eyes, which I had shut while recovering my firmness, I now met in
+the glass, looking straight at me, the eyes of a young man of four
+or five and twenty.  Terrified by this new ghost, I closed my eyes,
+and made a strong effort to recover myself.  Opening them again, I
+saw, shaving his cheek in the glass, my father, who has long been
+dead.  Nay, I even saw my grandfather too, whom I never did see in
+my life.
+<p>
+Although naturally much affected by these remarkable visitations, I
+determined to keep my secret, until the time agreed upon for the
+present general disclosure.  Agitated by a multitude of curious
+thoughts, I retired to my room, that night, prepared to encounter
+some new experience of a spectral character.  Nor was my preparation
+needless, for, waking from an uneasy sleep at exactly two o&#8217;clock in
+the morning, what were my feelings to find that I was sharing my bed
+with the skeleton of Master�B.!
+<p>
+I sprang up, and the skeleton sprang up also.  I then heard a
+plaintive voice saying, &#8220;Where am I?  What is become of me?&#8221; and,
+looking hard in that direction, perceived the ghost of Master�B.
+<p>
+The young spectre was dressed in an obsolete fashion:  or rather,
+was not so much dressed as put into a case of inferior pepper-and-salt
+cloth, made horrible by means of shining buttons.  I observed
+that these buttons went, in a double row, over each shoulder of the
+young ghost, and appeared to descend his back.  He wore a frill
+round his neck.  His right hand (which I distinctly noticed to be
+inky) was laid upon his stomach; connecting this action with some
+feeble pimples on his countenance, and his general air of nausea, I
+concluded this ghost to be the ghost of a boy who had habitually
+taken a great deal too much medicine.
+<p>
+&#8220;Where am I?&#8221; said the little spectre, in a pathetic voice.  &#8220;And
+why was I born in the Calomel days, and why did I have all that
+Calomel given me?&#8221;
+<p>
+I replied, with sincere earnestness, that upon my soul I couldn&#8217;t
+tell him.
+<p>
+&#8220;Where is my little sister,&#8221; said the ghost, &#8220;and where my angelic
+little wife, and where is the boy I went to school with?&#8221;
+<p>
+I entreated the phantom to be comforted, and above all things to
+take heart respecting the loss of the boy he went to school with.  I
+represented to him that probably that boy never did, within human
+experience, come out well, when discovered.  I urged that I myself
+had, in later life, turned up several boys whom I went to school
+with, and none of them had at all answered.  I expressed my humble
+belief that that boy never did answer.  I represented that he was a
+mythic character, a delusion, and a snare.  I recounted how, the
+last time I found him, I found him at a dinner party behind a wall
+of white cravat, with an inconclusive opinion on every possible
+subject, and a power of silent boredom absolutely Titanic.  I
+related how, on the strength of our having been together at &#8220;Old
+Doylance&#8217;s,&#8221; he had asked himself to breakfast with me (a social
+offence of the largest magnitude); how, fanning my weak embers of
+belief in Doylance&#8217;s boys, I had let him in; and how, he had proved
+to be a fearful wanderer about the earth, pursuing the race of Adam
+with inexplicable notions concerning the currency, and with a
+proposition that the Bank of England should, on pain of being
+abolished, instantly strike off and circulate, God knows how many
+thousand millions of ten-and-sixpenny notes.
+<p>
+The ghost heard me in silence, and with a fixed stare.  &#8220;Barber!&#8221; it
+apostrophised me when I had finished.
+<p>
+&#8220;Barber?&#8221; I repeated&#8212;for I am not of that profession.
+<p>
+&#8220;Condemned,&#8221; said the ghost, &#8220;to shave a constant change of
+customers&#8212;now, me&#8212;now, a young man&#8212;now, thyself as thou art&#8212;now,
+thy father&#8212;now, thy grandfather; condemned, too, to lie down with a
+skeleton every night, and to rise with it every morning&#8212;&#8221;
+<p>
+(I shuddered on hearing this dismal announcement.)
+<p>
+&#8220;Barber!  Pursue me!&#8221;
+<p>
+I had felt, even before the words were uttered, that I was under a
+spell to pursue the phantom.  I immediately did so, and was in
+Master�B.&#8217;s room no longer.
+<p>
+Most people know what long and fatiguing night journeys had been
+forced upon the witches who used to confess, and who, no doubt, told
+the exact truth&#8212;particularly as they were always assisted with
+leading questions, and the Torture was always ready.  I asseverate
+that, during my occupation of Master�B.&#8217;s room, I was taken by the
+ghost that haunted it, on expeditions fully as long and wild as any
+of those.  Assuredly, I was presented to no shabby old man with a
+goat&#8217;s horns and tail (something between Pan and an old clothesman),
+holding conventional receptions, as stupid as those of real life and
+less decent; but, I came upon other things which appeared to me to
+have more meaning.
+<p>
+Confident that I speak the truth and shall be believed, I declare
+without hesitation that I followed the ghost, in the first instance
+on a broom-stick, and afterwards on a rocking-horse.  The very smell
+of the animal&#8217;s paint&#8212;especially when I brought it out, by making
+him warm&#8212;I am ready to swear to.  I followed the ghost, afterwards,
+in a hackney coach; an institution with the peculiar smell of which,
+the present generation is unacquainted, but to which I am again
+ready to swear as a combination of stable, dog with the mange, and
+very old bellows.  (In this, I appeal to previous generations to
+confirm or refute me.)  I pursued the phantom, on a headless donkey:
+at least, upon a donkey who was so interested in the state of his
+stomach that his head was always down there, investigating it; on
+ponies, expressly born to kick up behind; on roundabouts and swings,
+from fairs; in the first cab&#8212;another forgotten institution where
+the fare regularly got into bed, and was tucked up with the driver.
+<p>
+Not to trouble you with a detailed account of all my travels in
+pursuit of the ghost of Master�B., which were longer and more
+wonderful than those of Sinbad the Sailor, I will confine myself to
+one experience from which you may judge of many.
+<p>
+I was marvellously changed.  I was myself, yet not myself.  I was
+conscious of something within me, which has been the same all
+through my life, and which I have always recognised under all its
+phases and varieties as never altering, and yet I was not the I who
+had gone to bed in Master�B.&#8217;s room.  I had the smoothest of faces
+and the shortest of legs, and I had taken another creature like
+myself, also with the smoothest of faces and the shortest of legs,
+behind a door, and was confiding to him a proposition of the most
+astounding nature.
+<p>
+This proposition was, that we should have a Seraglio.
+<p>
+The other creature assented warmly.  He had no notion of
+respectability, neither had I.  It was the custom of the East, it
+was the way of the good Caliph Haroun Alraschid (let me have the
+corrupted name again for once, it is so scented with sweet
+memories!), the usage was highly laudable, and most worthy of
+imitation.  &#8220;O, yes!  Let us,&#8221; said the other creature with a jump,
+&#8220;have a Seraglio.&#8221;
+<p>
+It was not because we entertained the faintest doubts of the
+meritorious character of the Oriental establishment we proposed to
+import, that we perceived it must be kept a secret from Miss
+Griffin.  It was because we knew Miss Griffin to be bereft of human
+sympathies, and incapable of appreciating the greatness of the great
+Haroun.  Mystery impenetrably shrouded from Miss Griffin then, let
+us entrust it to Miss Bule.
+<p>
+We were ten in Miss Griffin&#8217;s establishment by Hampstead Ponds;
+eight ladies and two gentlemen.  Miss Bule, whom I judge to have
+attained the ripe age of eight or nine, took the lead in society.  I
+opened the subject to her in the course of the day, and proposed
+that she should become the Favourite.
+<p>
+Miss Bule, after struggling with the diffidence so natural to, and
+charming in, her adorable sex, expressed herself as flattered by the
+idea, but wished to know how it was proposed to provide for Miss
+Pipson?  Miss Bule&#8212;who was understood to have vowed towards that
+young lady, a friendship, halves, and no secrets, until death, on
+the Church Service and Lessons complete in two volumes with case and
+lock&#8212;Miss Bule said she could not, as the friend of Pipson,
+disguise from herself, or me, that Pipson was not one of the common.
+<p>
+Now, Miss Pipson, having curly hair and blue eyes (which was my idea
+of anything mortal and feminine that was called Fair), I promptly
+replied that I regarded Miss Pipson in the light of a Fair
+Circassian.
+<p>
+&#8220;And what then?&#8221; Miss Bule pensively asked.
+<p>
+I replied that she must be inveigled by a Merchant, brought to me
+veiled, and purchased as a slave.
+<p>
+[The other creature had already fallen into the second male place in
+the State, and was set apart for Grand Vizier.  He afterwards
+resisted this disposal of events, but had his hair pulled until he
+yielded.]
+<p>
+&#8220;Shall I not be jealous?&#8221; Miss Bule inquired, casting down her eyes.
+<p>
+&#8220;Zobeide, no,&#8221; I replied; &#8220;you will ever be the favourite Sultana;
+the first place in my heart, and on my throne, will be ever yours.&#8221;
+<p>
+Miss Bule, upon that assurance, consented to propound the idea to
+her seven beautiful companions.  It occurring to me, in the course
+of the same day, that we knew we could trust a grinning and
+good-natured soul called Tabby, who was the serving drudge of the house,
+and had no more figure than one of the beds, and upon whose face
+there was always more or less black-lead, I slipped into Miss Bule&#8217;s
+hand after supper, a little note to that effect; dwelling on the
+black-lead as being in a manner deposited by the finger of
+Providence, pointing Tabby out for Mesrour, the celebrated chief of
+the Blacks of the Hareem.
+<p>
+There were difficulties in the formation of the desired institution,
+as there are in all combinations.  The other creature showed himself
+of a low character, and, when defeated in aspiring to the throne,
+pretended to have conscientious scruples about prostrating himself
+before the Caliph; wouldn&#8217;t call him Commander of the Faithful;
+spoke of him slightingly and inconsistently as a mere &#8220;chap;&#8221; said
+he, the other creature, &#8220;wouldn&#8217;t play&#8221;&#8212;Play!&#8212;and was otherwise
+coarse and offensive.  This meanness of disposition was, however,
+put down by the general indignation of an united Seraglio, and I
+became blessed in the smiles of eight of the fairest of the
+daughters of men.
+<p>
+The smiles could only be bestowed when Miss Griffin was looking
+another way, and only then in a very wary manner, for there was a
+legend among the followers of the Prophet that she saw with a little
+round ornament in the middle of the pattern on the back of her
+shawl.  But every day after dinner, for an hour, we were all
+together, and then the Favourite and the rest of the Royal Hareem
+competed who should most beguile the leisure of the Serene Haroun
+reposing from the cares of State&#8212;which were generally, as in most
+affairs of State, of an arithmetical character, the Commander of the
+Faithful being a fearful boggler at a sum.
+<p>
+On these occasions, the devoted Mesrour, chief of the Blacks of the
+Hareem, was always in attendance (Miss Griffin usually ringing for
+that officer, at the same time, with great vehemence), but never
+acquitted himself in a manner worthy of his historical reputation.
+In the first place, his bringing a broom into the Divan of the
+Caliph, even when Haroun wore on his shoulders the red robe of anger
+(Miss Pipson&#8217;s pelisse), though it might be got over for the moment,
+was never to be quite satisfactorily accounted for.  In the second
+place, his breaking out into grinning exclamations of &#8220;Lork you
+pretties!&#8221; was neither Eastern nor respectful.  In the third place,
+when specially instructed to say &#8220;Bismillah!&#8221; he always said
+&#8220;Hallelujah!&#8221;  This officer, unlike his class, was too good-humoured
+altogether, kept his mouth open far too wide, expressed approbation
+to an incongruous extent, and even once&#8212;it was on the occasion of
+the purchase of the Fair Circassian for five hundred thousand purses
+of gold, and cheap, too&#8212;embraced the Slave, the Favourite, and the
+Caliph, all round.  (Parenthetically let me say God bless Mesrour,
+and may there have been sons and daughters on that tender bosom,
+softening many a hard day since!)
+<p>
+Miss Griffin was a model of propriety, and I am at a loss to imagine
+what the feelings of the virtuous woman would have been, if she had
+known, when she paraded us down the Hampstead Road two and two, that
+she was walking with a stately step at the head of Polygamy and
+Mahomedanism.  I believe that a mysterious and terrible joy with
+which the contemplation of Miss Griffin, in this unconscious state,
+inspired us, and a grim sense prevalent among us that there was a
+dreadful power in our knowledge of what Miss Griffin (who knew all
+things that could be learnt out of book) didn&#8217;t know, were the
+main-spring of the preservation of our secret.  It was wonderfully kept,
+but was once upon the verge of self-betrayal.  The danger and escape
+occurred upon a Sunday.  We were all ten ranged in a conspicuous
+part of the gallery at church, with Miss Griffin at our head&#8212;as we
+were every Sunday&#8212;advertising the establishment in an unsecular
+sort of way&#8212;when the description of Solomon in his domestic glory
+happened to be read.  The moment that monarch was thus referred to,
+conscience whispered me, &#8220;Thou, too, Haroun!&#8221;  The officiating
+minister had a cast in his eye, and it assisted conscience by giving
+him the appearance of reading personally at me.  A crimson blush,
+attended by a fearful perspiration, suffused my features.  The Grand
+Vizier became more dead than alive, and the whole Seraglio reddened
+as if the sunset of Bagdad shone direct upon their lovely faces.  At
+this portentous time the awful Griffin rose, and balefully surveyed
+the children of Islam.  My own impression was, that Church and State
+had entered into a conspiracy with Miss Griffin to expose us, and
+that we should all be put into white sheets, and exhibited in the
+centre aisle.  But, so Westerly&#8212;if I may be allowed the expression
+as opposite to Eastern associations&#8212;was Miss Griffin&#8217;s sense of
+rectitude, that she merely suspected Apples, and we were saved.
+<p>
+I have called the Seraglio, united.  Upon the question, solely,
+whether the Commander of the Faithful durst exercise a right of
+kissing in that sanctuary of the palace, were its peerless inmates
+divided.  Zobeide asserted a counter-right in the Favourite to
+scratch, and the fair Circassian put her face, for refuge, into a
+green baize bag, originally designed for books.  On the other hand,
+a young antelope of transcendent beauty from the fruitful plains of
+Camden Town (whence she had been brought, by traders, in the
+half-yearly caravan that crossed the intermediate desert after the
+holidays), held more liberal opinions, but stipulated for limiting
+the benefit of them to that dog, and son of a dog, the Grand Vizier&#8212;who
+had no rights, and was not in question.  At length, the
+difficulty was compromised by the installation of a very youthful
+slave as Deputy.  She, raised upon a stool, officially received upon
+her cheeks the salutes intended by the gracious Haroun for other
+Sultanas, and was privately rewarded from the coffers of the Ladies
+of the Hareem.
+<p>
+And now it was, at the full height of enjoyment of my bliss, that I
+became heavily troubled.  I began to think of my mother, and what
+she would say to my taking home at Midsummer eight of the most
+beautiful of the daughters of men, but all unexpected.  I thought of
+the number of beds we made up at our house, of my father&#8217;s income,
+and of the baker, and my despondency redoubled.  The Seraglio and
+malicious Vizier, divining the cause of their Lord&#8217;s unhappiness,
+did their utmost to augment it.  They professed unbounded fidelity,
+and declared that they would live and die with him.  Reduced to the
+utmost wretchedness by these protestations of attachment, I lay
+awake, for hours at a time, ruminating on my frightful lot.  In my
+despair, I think I might have taken an early opportunity of falling
+on my knees before Miss Griffin, avowing my resemblance to Solomon,
+and praying to be dealt with according to the outraged laws of my
+country, if an unthought-of means of escape had not opened before
+me.
+<p>
+One day, we were out walking, two and two&#8212;on which occasion the
+Vizier had his usual instructions to take note of the boy at the
+turnpike, and if he profanely gazed (which he always did) at the
+beauties of the Hareem, to have him bowstrung in the course of the
+night&#8212;and it happened that our hearts were veiled in gloom.  An
+unaccountable action on the part of the antelope had plunged the
+State into disgrace.  That charmer, on the representation that the
+previous day was her birthday, and that vast treasures had been sent
+in a hamper for its celebration (both baseless assertions), had
+secretly but most pressingly invited thirty-five neighbouring
+princes and princesses to a ball and supper:  with a special
+stipulation that they were &#8220;not to be fetched till twelve.&#8221;  This
+wandering of the antelope&#8217;s fancy, led to the surprising arrival at
+Miss Griffin&#8217;s door, in divers equipages and under various escorts,
+of a great company in full dress, who were deposited on the top step
+in a flush of high expectancy, and who were dismissed in tears.  At
+the beginning of the double knocks attendant on these ceremonies,
+the antelope had retired to a back attic, and bolted herself in; and
+at every new arrival, Miss Griffin had gone so much more and more
+distracted, that at last she had been seen to tear her front.
+Ultimate capitulation on the part of the offender, had been followed
+by solitude in the linen-closet, bread and water and a lecture to
+all, of vindictive length, in which Miss Griffin had used
+expressions:  Firstly, &#8220;I believe you all of you knew of it;&#8221;
+Secondly, &#8220;Every one of you is as wicked as another;&#8221; Thirdly, &#8220;A
+pack of little wretches.&#8221;
+<p>
+Under these circumstances, we were walking drearily along; and I
+especially, with my Moosulmaun responsibilities heavy on me, was
+in a very low state of mind; when a strange man accosted Miss
+Griffin, and, after walking on at her side for a little while and
+talking with her, looked at me.  Supposing him to be a minion of the
+law, and that my hour was come, I instantly ran away, with the
+general purpose of making for Egypt.
+<p>
+The whole Seraglio cried out, when they saw me making off as fast as
+my legs would carry me (I had an impression that the first turning
+on the left, and round by the public-house, would be the shortest
+way to the Pyramids), Miss Griffin screamed after me, the faithless
+Vizier ran after me, and the boy at the turnpike dodged me into a
+corner, like a sheep, and cut me off.  Nobody scolded me when I was
+taken and brought back; Miss Griffin only said, with a stunning
+gentleness, This was very curious!  Why had I run away when the
+gentleman looked at me?
+<p>
+If I had had any breath to answer with, I dare say I should have
+made no answer; having no breath, I certainly made none.  Miss
+Griffin and the strange man took me between them, and walked me back
+to the palace in a sort of state; but not at all (as I couldn&#8217;t help
+feeling, with astonishment) in culprit state.
+<p>
+When we got there, we went into a room by ourselves, and Miss
+Griffin called in to her assistance, Mesrour, chief of the dusky
+guards of the Hareem.  Mesrour, on being whispered to, began to shed
+tears.  &#8220;Bless you, my precious!&#8221; said that officer, turning to me;
+&#8220;your Pa&#8217;s took bitter bad!&#8221;
+<p>
+I asked, with a fluttered heart, &#8220;Is he very ill?&#8221;
+<p>
+&#8220;Lord temper the wind to you, my lamb!&#8221; said the good Mesrour,
+kneeling down, that I might have a comforting shoulder for my head
+to rest on, &#8220;your Pa&#8217;s dead!&#8221;
+<p>
+Haroun Alraschid took to flight at the words; the Seraglio vanished;
+from that moment, I never again saw one of the eight of the fairest
+of the daughters of men.
+<p>
+I was taken home, and there was Debt at home as well as Death, and
+we had a sale there.  My own little bed was so superciliously looked
+upon by a Power unknown to me, hazily called &#8220;The Trade,&#8221; that a
+brass coal-scuttle, a roasting-jack, and a birdcage, were obliged to
+be put into it to make a Lot of it, and then it went for a song.  So
+I heard mentioned, and I wondered what song, and thought what a
+dismal song it must have been to sing!
+<p>
+Then, I was sent to a great, cold, bare, school of big boys; where
+everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy, without being
+enough; where everybody, large and small, was cruel; where the boys
+knew all about the sale, before I got there, and asked me what I had
+fetched, and who had bought me, and hooted at me, &#8220;Going, going,
+gone!&#8221;  I never whispered in that wretched place that I had been
+Haroun, or had had a Seraglio:  for, I knew that if I mentioned my
+reverses, I should be so worried, that I should have to drown myself
+in the muddy pond near the playground, which looked like the beer.
+<p>
+Ah me, ah me!  No other ghost has haunted the boy&#8217;s room, my
+friends, since I have occupied it, than the ghost of my own
+childhood, the ghost of my own innocence, the ghost of my own airy
+belief.  Many a time have I pursued the phantom:  never with this
+man&#8217;s stride of mine to come up with it, never with these man&#8217;s
+hands of mine to touch it, never more to this man&#8217;s heart of mine to
+hold it in its purity.  And here you see me working out, as
+cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of shaving in the glass
+a constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up with
+the skeleton allotted to me for my mortal companion.
+<br><br><hr><br>
+<center><h2><a name="3">THE TRIAL FOR MURDER</a></h2></center>
+
+<p><br>
+<big><big>I</big></big> HAVE always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among
+persons of superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their
+own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange
+sort.  Almost all men are afraid that what they could relate in such
+wise would find no parallel or response in a listener&#8217;s internal
+life, and might be suspected or laughed at.  A truthful traveller,
+who should have seen some extraordinary creature in the likeness of
+a sea-serpent, would have no fear of mentioning it; but the same
+traveller, having had some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary of
+thought, vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable mental
+impression, would hesitate considerably before he would own to it.
+To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in which such
+subjects are involved.  We do not habitually communicate our
+experiences of these subjective things as we do our experiences of
+objective creation.  The consequence is, that the general stock of
+experience in this regard appears exceptional, and really is so, in
+respect of being miserably imperfect.
+<p>
+In what I am going to relate, I have no intention of setting up,
+opposing, or supporting, any theory whatever.  I know the history of
+the Bookseller of Berlin, I have studied the case of the wife of a
+late Astronomer Royal as related by Sir David Brewster, and I have
+followed the minutest details of a much more remarkable case of
+Spectral Illusion occurring within my private circle of friends.  It
+may be necessary to state as to this last, that the sufferer (a
+lady) was in no degree, however distant, related to me.  A mistaken
+assumption on that head might suggest an explanation of a part of my
+own case,&#8212;but only a part,&#8212;which would be wholly without
+foundation.  It cannot be referred to my inheritance of any
+developed peculiarity, nor had I ever before any at all similar
+experience, nor have I ever had any at all similar experience since.
+<p>
+It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, a certain murder
+was committed in England, which attracted great attention.  We hear
+more than enough of murderers as they rise in succession to their
+atrocious eminence, and I would bury the memory of this particular
+brute, if I could, as his body was buried, in Newgate Jail.  I
+purposely abstain from giving any direct clue to the criminal&#8217;s
+individuality.
+<p>
+When the murder was first discovered, no suspicion fell&#8212;or I ought
+rather to say, for I cannot be too precise in my facts, it was
+nowhere publicly hinted that any suspicion fell&#8212;on the man who was
+afterwards brought to trial.  As no reference was at that time made
+to him in the newspapers, it is obviously impossible that any
+description of him can at that time have been given in the
+newspapers.  It is essential that this fact be remembered.
+<p>
+Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing the account of
+that first discovery, I found it to be deeply interesting, and I
+read it with close attention.  I read it twice, if not three times.
+The discovery had been made in a bedroom, and, when I laid down the
+paper, I was aware of a flash&#8212;rush&#8212;flow&#8212;I do not know what to
+call it,&#8212;no word I can find is satisfactorily descriptive,&#8212;in
+which I seemed to see that bedroom passing through my room, like a
+picture impossibly painted on a running river.  Though almost
+instantaneous in its passing, it was perfectly clear; so clear that
+I distinctly, and with a sense of relief, observed the absence of
+the dead body from the bed.
+<p>
+It was in no romantic place that I had this curious sensation, but
+in chambers in Piccadilly, very near to the corner of St. James&#8217;s
+Street.  It was entirely new to me.  I was in my easy-chair at the
+moment, and the sensation was accompanied with a peculiar shiver
+which started the chair from its position.  (But it is to be noted
+that the chair ran easily on castors.)  I went to one of the windows
+(there are two in the room, and the room is on the second floor) to
+refresh my eyes with the moving objects down in Piccadilly.  It was
+a bright autumn morning, and the street was sparkling and cheerful.
+The wind was high.  As I looked out, it brought down from the Park a
+quantity of fallen leaves, which a gust took, and whirled into a
+spiral pillar.  As the pillar fell and the leaves dispersed, I saw
+two men on the opposite side of the way, going from West to East.
+They were one behind the other.  The foremost man often looked back
+over his shoulder.  The second man followed him, at a distance of
+some thirty paces, with his right hand menacingly raised.  First,
+the singularity and steadiness of this threatening gesture in so
+public a thoroughfare attracted my attention; and next, the more
+remarkable circumstance that nobody heeded it.  Both men threaded
+their way among the other passengers with a smoothness hardly
+consistent even with the action of walking on a pavement; and no
+single creature, that I could see, gave them place, touched them, or
+looked after them.  In passing before my windows, they both stared
+up at me.  I saw their two faces very distinctly, and I knew that I
+could recognise them anywhere.  Not that I had consciously noticed
+anything very remarkable in either face, except that the man who
+went first had an unusually lowering appearance, and that the face
+of the man who followed him was of the colour of impure wax.
+<p>
+I am a bachelor, and my valet and his wife constitute my whole
+establishment.  My occupation is in a certain Branch Bank, and I
+wish that my duties as head of a Department were as light as they
+are popularly supposed to be.  They kept me in town that autumn,
+when I stood in need of change.  I was not ill, but I was not well.
+My reader is to make the most that can be reasonably made of my
+feeling jaded, having a depressing sense upon me of a monotonous
+life, and being &#8220;slightly dyspeptic.&#8221;  I am assured by my renowned
+doctor that my real state of health at that time justifies no
+stronger description, and I quote his own from his written answer to
+my request for it.
+<p>
+As the circumstances of the murder, gradually unravelling, took
+stronger and stronger possession of the public mind, I kept them
+away from mine by knowing as little about them as was possible in
+the midst of the universal excitement.  But I knew that a verdict of
+Wilful Murder had been found against the suspected murderer, and
+that he had been committed to Newgate for trial.  I also knew that
+his trial had been postponed over one Sessions of the Central
+Criminal Court, on the ground of general prejudice and want of time
+for the preparation of the defence.  I may further have known, but I
+believe I did not, when, or about when, the Sessions to which his
+trial stood postponed would come on.
+<p>
+My sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room, are all on one floor.
+With the last there is no communication but through the bedroom.
+True, there is a door in it, once communicating with the staircase;
+but a part of the fitting of my bath has been&#8212;and had then been for
+some years&#8212;fixed across it.  At the same period, and as a part of
+the same arrangement,&#8212;the door had been nailed up and canvased
+over.
+<p>
+I was standing in my bedroom late one night, giving some directions
+to my servant before he went to bed.  My face was towards the only
+available door of communication with the dressing-room, and it was
+closed.  My servant&#8217;s back was towards that door.  While I was
+speaking to him, I saw it open, and a man look in, who very
+earnestly and mysteriously beckoned to me.  That man was the man who
+had gone second of the two along Piccadilly, and whose face was of
+the colour of impure wax.
+<p>
+The figure, having beckoned, drew back, and closed the door.  With
+no longer pause than was made by my crossing the bedroom, I opened
+the dressing-room door, and looked in.  I had a lighted candle
+already in my hand.  I felt no inward expectation of seeing the
+figure in the dressing-room, and I did not see it there.
+<p>
+Conscious that my servant stood amazed, I turned round to him, and
+said:  &#8220;Derrick, could you believe that in my cool senses I fancied
+I saw a&#8212;&#8221;  As I there laid my hand upon his breast, with a sudden
+start he trembled violently, and said, &#8220;O Lord, yes, sir!  A dead
+man beckoning!&#8221;
+<p>
+Now I do not believe that this John Derrick, my trusty and attached
+servant for more than twenty years, had any impression whatever of
+having seen any such figure, until I touched him.  The change in him
+was so startling, when I touched him, that I fully believe he
+derived his impression in some occult manner from me at that
+instant.
+<p>
+I bade John Derrick bring some brandy, and I gave him a dram, and
+was glad to take one myself.  Of what had preceded that night&#8217;s
+phenomenon, I told him not a single word.  Reflecting on it, I was
+absolutely certain that I had never seen that face before, except on
+the one occasion in Piccadilly.  Comparing its expression when
+beckoning at the door with its expression when it had stared up at
+me as I stood at my window, I came to the conclusion that on the
+first occasion it had sought to fasten itself upon my memory, and
+that on the second occasion it had made sure of being immediately
+remembered.
+<p>
+I was not very comfortable that night, though I felt a certainty,
+difficult to explain, that the figure would not return.  At daylight
+I fell into a heavy sleep, from which I was awakened by John
+Derrick&#8217;s coming to my bedside with a paper in his hand.
+<p>
+This paper, it appeared, had been the subject of an altercation at
+the door between its bearer and my servant.  It was a summons to me
+to serve upon a Jury at the forthcoming Sessions of the Central
+Criminal Court at the Old Bailey.  I had never before been summoned
+on such a Jury, as John Derrick well knew.  He believed&#8212;I am not
+certain at this hour whether with reason or otherwise&#8212;that that
+class of Jurors were customarily chosen on a lower qualification
+than mine, and he had at first refused to accept the summons.  The
+man who served it had taken the matter very coolly.  He had said
+that my attendance or non-attendance was nothing to him; there the
+summons was; and I should deal with it at my own peril, and not at
+his.
+<p>
+For a day or two I was undecided whether to respond to this call, or
+take no notice of it.  I was not conscious of the slightest
+mysterious bias, influence, or attraction, one way or other.  Of
+that I am as strictly sure as of every other statement that I make
+here.  Ultimately I decided, as a break in the monotony of my life,
+that I would go.
+<p>
+The appointed morning was a raw morning in the month of November.
+There was a dense brown fog in Piccadilly, and it became positively
+black and in the last degree oppressive East of Temple Bar.  I found
+the passages and staircases of the Court-House flaringly lighted
+with gas, and the Court itself similarly illuminated.  I <i>think</i> that,
+until I was conducted by officers into the Old Court and saw its
+crowded state, I did not know that the Murderer was to be tried that
+day.  I <i>think</i> that, until I was so helped into the Old Court with
+considerable difficulty, I did not know into which of the two Courts
+sitting my summons would take me.  But this must not be received as
+a positive assertion, for I am not completely satisfied in my mind
+on either point.
+<p>
+I took my seat in the place appropriated to Jurors in waiting, and I
+looked about the Court as well as I could through the cloud of fog
+and breath that was heavy in it.  I noticed the black vapour hanging
+like a murky curtain outside the great windows, and I noticed the
+stifled sound of wheels on the straw or tan that was littered in the
+street; also, the hum of the people gathered there, which a shrill
+whistle, or a louder song or hail than the rest, occasionally
+pierced.  Soon afterwards the Judges, two in number, entered, and
+took their seats.  The buzz in the Court was awfully hushed.  The
+direction was given to put the Murderer to the bar.  He appeared
+there.  And in that same instant I recognised in him the first of
+the two men who had gone down Piccadilly.
+<p>
+If my name had been called then, I doubt if I could have answered to
+it audibly.  But it was called about sixth or eighth in the panel,
+and I was by that time able to say, &#8220;Here!&#8221;  Now, observe.  As I
+stepped into the box, the prisoner, who had been looking on
+attentively, but with no sign of concern, became violently agitated,
+and beckoned to his attorney.  The prisoner&#8217;s wish to challenge me
+was so manifest, that it occasioned a pause, during which the
+attorney, with his hand upon the dock, whispered with his client,
+and shook his head.  I afterwards had it from that gentleman, that
+the prisoner&#8217;s first affrighted words to him were, &#8220;<i>At all hazards,
+challenge that man!</i>&#8221;  But that, as he would give no reason for it,
+and admitted that he had not even known my name until he heard it
+called and I appeared, it was not done.
+<p>
+Both on the ground already explained, that I wish to avoid reviving
+the unwholesome memory of that Murderer, and also because a detailed
+account of his long trial is by no means indispensable to my
+narrative, I shall confine myself closely to such incidents in the
+ten days and nights during which we, the Jury, were kept together,
+as directly bear on my own curious personal experience.  It is in
+that, and not in the Murderer, that I seek to interest my reader.
+It is to that, and not to a page of the Newgate Calendar, that I beg
+attention.
+<p>
+I was chosen Foreman of the Jury.  On the second morning of the
+trial, after evidence had been taken for two hours (I heard the
+church clocks strike), happening to cast my eyes over my brother
+jurymen, I found an inexplicable difficulty in counting them.  I
+counted them several times, yet always with the same difficulty.  In
+short, I made them one too many.
+<p>
+I touched the brother jurymen whose place was next me, and I
+whispered to him, &#8220;Oblige me by counting us.&#8221;  He looked surprised
+by the request, but turned his head and counted. &#8220;Why,&#8221; says he,
+suddenly, &#8220;we are Thirt&#8212;; but no, it&#8217;s not possible.  No.  We are
+twelve.&#8221;
+<p>
+According to my counting that day, we were always right in detail,
+but in the gross we were always one too many.  There was no
+appearance&#8212;no figure&#8212;to account for it; but I had now an inward
+foreshadowing of the figure that was surely coming.
+<p>
+The Jury were housed at the London Tavern.  We all slept in one
+large room on separate tables, and we were constantly in the charge
+and under the eye of the officer sworn to hold us in safe-keeping.
+I see no reason for suppressing the real name of that officer.  He
+was intelligent, highly polite, and obliging, and (I was glad to
+hear) much respected in the City.  He had an agreeable presence,
+good eyes, enviable black whiskers, and a fine sonorous voice.  His
+name was Mr. Harker.
+<p>
+When we turned into our twelve beds at night, Mr. Harker&#8217;s bed was
+drawn across the door.  On the night of the second day, not being
+disposed to lie down, and seeing Mr. Harker sitting on his bed, I
+went and sat beside him, and offered him a pinch of snuff.  As Mr.
+Harker&#8217;s hand touched mine in taking it from my box, a peculiar
+shiver crossed him, and he said, &#8220;Who is this?&#8221;
+<p>
+Following Mr. Harker&#8217;s eyes, and looking along the room, I saw again
+the figure I expected,&#8212;the second of the two men who had gone down
+Piccadilly.  I rose, and advanced a few steps; then stopped, and
+looked round at Mr. Harker.  He was quite unconcerned, laughed, and
+said in a pleasant way, &#8220;I thought for a moment we had a thirteenth
+juryman, without a bed.  But I see it is the moonlight.&#8221;
+<p>
+Making no revelation to Mr. Harker, but inviting him to take a walk
+with me to the end of the room, I watched what the figure did.  It
+stood for a few moments by the bedside of each of my eleven brother
+jurymen, close to the pillow.  It always went to the right-hand side
+of the bed, and always passed out crossing the foot of the next bed.
+It seemed, from the action of the head, merely to look down
+pensively at each recumbent figure.  It took no notice of me, or of
+my bed, which was that nearest to Mr. Harker&#8217;s.  It seemed to go out
+where the moonlight came in, through a high window, as by an aerial
+flight of stairs.
+<p>
+Next morning at breakfast, it appeared that everybody present had
+dreamed of the murdered man last night, except myself and Mr.
+Harker.
+<p>
+I now felt as convinced that the second man who had gone down
+Piccadilly was the murdered man (so to speak), as if it had been
+borne into my comprehension by his immediate testimony.  But even
+this took place, and in a manner for which I was not at all
+prepared.
+<p>
+On the fifth day of the trial, when the case for the prosecution was
+drawing to a close, a miniature of the murdered man, missing from
+his bedroom upon the discovery of the deed, and afterwards found in
+a hiding-place where the Murderer had been seen digging, was put in
+evidence.  Having been identified by the witness under examination,
+it was handed up to the Bench, and thence handed down to be
+inspected by the Jury.  As an officer in a black gown was making his
+way with it across to me, the figure of the second man who had gone
+down Piccadilly impetuously started from the crowd, caught the
+miniature from the officer, and gave it to me with his own hands, at
+the same time saying, in a low and hollow tone,&#8212;before I saw the
+miniature, which was in a locket,&#8212;&#8220;<i>I was younger then, and my face
+was not then drained of blood</i>.&#8221;  It also came between me and the
+brother juryman to whom I would have given the miniature, and
+between him and the brother juryman to whom he would have given it,
+and so passed it on through the whole of our number, and back into
+my possession.  Not one of them, however, detected this.
+<p>
+At table, and generally when we were shut up together in Mr.
+Harker&#8217;s custody, we had from the first naturally discussed the
+day&#8217;s proceedings a good deal.  On that fifth day, the case for the
+prosecution being closed, and we having that side of the question in
+a completed shape before us, our discussion was more animated and
+serious.  Among our number was a vestryman,&#8212;the densest idiot I
+have ever seen at large,&#8212;who met the plainest evidence with the
+most preposterous objections, and who was sided with by two flabby
+parochial parasites; all the three impanelled from a district so
+delivered over to Fever that they ought to have been upon their own
+trial for five hundred Murders.  When these mischievous blockheads
+were at their loudest, which was towards midnight, while some of us
+were already preparing for bed, I again saw the murdered man.  He
+stood grimly behind them, beckoning to me.  On my going towards
+them, and striking into the conversation, he immediately retired.
+This was the beginning of a separate series of appearances, confined
+to that long room in which we were confined.  Whenever a knot of my
+brother jurymen laid their heads together, I saw the head of the
+murdered man among theirs.  Whenever their comparison of notes was
+going against him, he would solemnly and irresistibly beckon to me.
+<p>
+It will be borne in mind that down to the production of the
+miniature, on the fifth day of the trial, I had never seen the
+Appearance in Court.  Three changes occurred now that we entered on
+the case for the defence.  Two of them I will mention together,
+first.  The figure was now in Court continually, and it never there
+addressed itself to me, but always to the person who was speaking at
+the time.  For instance:  the throat of the murdered man had been
+cut straight across.  In the opening speech for the defence, it was
+suggested that the deceased might have cut his own throat.  At that
+very moment, the figure, with its throat in the dreadful condition
+referred to (this it had concealed before), stood at the speaker&#8217;s
+elbow, motioning across and across its windpipe, now with the right
+hand, now with the left, vigorously suggesting to the speaker
+himself the impossibility of such a wound having been self-inflicted
+by either hand.  For another instance:  a witness to character, a
+woman, deposed to the prisoner&#8217;s being the most amiable of mankind.
+The figure at that instant stood on the floor before her, looking
+her full in the face, and pointing out the prisoner&#8217;s evil
+countenance with an extended arm and an outstretched finger.
+<p>
+The third change now to be added impressed me strongly as the most
+marked and striking of all.  I do not theorise upon it; I accurately
+state it, and there leave it.  Although the Appearance was not
+itself perceived by those whom it addressed, its coming close to
+such persons was invariably attended by some trepidation or
+disturbance on their part.  It seemed to me as if it were prevented,
+by laws to which I was not amenable, from fully revealing itself to
+others, and yet as if it could invisibly, dumbly, and darkly
+overshadow their minds.  When the leading counsel for the defence
+suggested that hypothesis of suicide, and the figure stood at the
+learned gentleman&#8217;s elbow, frightfully sawing at its severed throat,
+it is undeniable that the counsel faltered in his speech, lost for a
+few seconds the thread of his ingenious discourse, wiped his
+forehead with his handkerchief, and turned extremely pale.  When the
+witness to character was confronted by the Appearance, her eyes most
+certainly did follow the direction of its pointed finger, and rest
+in great hesitation and trouble upon the prisoner&#8217;s face.  Two
+additional illustrations will suffice.  On the eighth day of the
+trial, after the pause which was every day made early in the
+afternoon for a few minutes&#8217; rest and refreshment, I came back into
+Court with the rest of the Jury some little time before the return
+of the Judges.  Standing up in the box and looking about me, I
+thought the figure was not there, until, chancing to raise my eyes
+to the gallery, I saw it bending forward, and leaning over a very
+decent woman, as if to assure itself whether the Judges had resumed
+their seats or not.  Immediately afterwards that woman screamed,
+fainted, and was carried out.  So with the venerable, sagacious, and
+patient Judge who conducted the trial.  When the case was over, and
+he settled himself and his papers to sum up, the murdered man,
+entering by the Judges&#8217; door, advanced to his Lordship&#8217;s desk, and
+looked eagerly over his shoulder at the pages of his notes which he
+was turning.  A change came over his Lordship&#8217;s face; his hand
+stopped; the peculiar shiver, that I knew so well, passed over him;
+he faltered, &#8220;Excuse me, gentlemen, for a few moments.  I am
+somewhat oppressed by the vitiated air;&#8221; and did not recover until
+he had drunk a glass of water.
+<p>
+Through all the monotony of six of those interminable ten days,&#8212;the
+same Judges and others on the bench, the same Murderer in the dock,
+the same lawyers at the table, the same tones of question and answer
+rising to the roof of the court, the same scratching of the Judge&#8217;s
+pen, the same ushers going in and out, the same lights kindled at
+the same hour when there had been any natural light of day, the same
+foggy curtain outside the great windows when it was foggy, the same
+rain pattering and dripping when it was rainy, the same footmarks of
+turnkeys and prisoner day after day on the same sawdust, the same
+keys locking and unlocking the same heavy doors,&#8212;through all the
+wearisome monotony which made me feel as if I had been Foreman of
+the Jury for a vast period of time, and Piccadilly had flourished
+coevally with Babylon, the murdered man never lost one trace of his
+distinctness in my eyes, nor was he at any moment less distinct than
+anybody else.  I must not omit, as a matter of fact, that I never
+once saw the Appearance which I call by the name of the murdered man
+look at the Murderer.  Again and again I wondered, &#8220;Why does he
+not?&#8221;  But he never did.
+<p>
+Nor did he look at me, after the production of the miniature, until
+the last closing minutes of the trial arrived.  We retired to
+consider, at seven minutes before ten at night.  The idiotic
+vestryman and his two parochial parasites gave us so much trouble
+that we twice returned into Court to beg to have certain extracts
+from the Judge&#8217;s notes re-read.  Nine of us had not the smallest
+doubt about those passages, neither, I believe, had any one in the
+Court; the dunder-headed triumvirate, having no idea but
+obstruction, disputed them for that very reason.  At length we
+prevailed, and finally the Jury returned into Court at ten minutes
+past twelve.
+<p>
+The murdered man at that time stood directly opposite the Jury-box,
+on the other side of the Court.  As I took my place, his eyes rested
+on me with great attention; he seemed satisfied, and slowly shook a
+great gray veil, which he carried on his arm for the first time,
+over his head and whole form.  As I gave in our verdict, &#8220;Guilty,&#8221;
+the veil collapsed, all was gone, and his place was empty.
+<p>
+The Murderer, being asked by the Judge, according to usage, whether
+he had anything to say before sentence of Death should be passed
+upon him, indistinctly muttered something which was described in the
+leading newspapers of the following day as &#8220;a few rambling,
+incoherent, and half-audible words, in which he was understood to
+complain that he had not had a fair trial, because the Foreman of
+the Jury was prepossessed against him.&#8221;  The remarkable declaration
+that he really made was this:  &#8220;<i>My Lord, I knew I was a doomed man,
+when the Foreman of my Jury came into the box.  My Lord, I knew he
+would never let me off, because, before I was taken, he somehow got
+to my bedside in the night, woke me, and put a rope round my neck</i>.&#8221;
+<br><br><hr size="3" noshade></DIV>
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